Just heard back from Apple Music today, and their engineers claimed that only four songs were played in December. This is clearly incorrect, as I listened to full albums and explored new artists, such as Tyla and Bad Bunny, who were not part of my usual listening habits before.
I also reviewed my listening minutes for other months(with their supervisor on the phone who is handling this case), which totalled 34,000 and 37,000 minutes for Oct and Nov respectively. However, when checking the artist breakdown, it showed Artist 1 with 6,000 minutes, Artist 2 with 800 minutes, and Artist 3 with 200 minutes, indicating a clear error on their end. It seems that not all streams are being accounted for when I am playing music on my iPhone.
They told me that they will call back on Saturday, January 18. I also pointed out that this issue could imply underpayment to artists for streams, which is concerning. Apple Music should ensure transparency and clarity, especially since I could not find any “10 songs rule” that might justify such discrepancies in my case.