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iOS 13's Music App Sucks

samuelstevens.me

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Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#121

Post by lloeki »

teunispeters wrote: post #113
Shebanator wrote: post #55

As someone who worked on Google Play Music for many years, I'd like to point out that a lot of the UX criticisms here are really just personal preferences, and those preferences are based in very large part on the way you listen to music. Some people are "lean back" listeners who just want to put on a radio station of music they like and not fiddle with it. Others are expert curators who have tens of thousands of tra…

Something in common between both the modern "music" app from apple and google music app (android) is both try to push streaming services and there's no way to disable or block that. Making them both VERY unsuitable to a device where a child has access.

Go to iOS Settings -> Music. The first toggle is literally "Show Apple Music", which instantly disables all "streaming services" features, while keeping the sync-your-own-library-and-playlists-over-iCloud if you're a iTunes Match subscriber.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#122

Post by toomuchApple »

otterley wrote: post #54
berdon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're using an Apple product - Apple is known for their tailored and single-path UX that they don't simply expect their users to love, they also don't care when they don't. I'm not saying your complaints aren't valid or warranted - they're just not relevant to Apple unless their designers agree with you.

Apple does care about customer feedback, but by and large, they're not looking for it on HN or in random blogs. If you want to reach out to them, you can do so here: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Given all the anti consumer practices of Apple, I wouldn't take that link too seriously.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#123

Post by lloeki »

oflannabhra wrote: post #8

I have an Apple Music subscription and use Apple Music (the app) daily. In this article, I hear a lot of "I". IMO, the big challenge with Apple Music is all the legacy that a) personal libraries, b) iTunes Match, and c) iTunes purchases all bring to the new streaming paradigm. Those are problems Apple has to solve, and can't just discard. Apple's customers have plowed tons of $$$ to "own" their libraries, and Apple i…

The library management (with and without Apple Music), digital locker, and queue system are the three core features I can't move to another music app-slash-service. And I've tried all of them, many, many times. I especially find Spotify infuriating, the library is so completely unusable they might as well remove it and turn the app into a giant search box.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#124

Post by toomuchApple »

rconti wrote: post #4

Don't forget the mundane detail of "I have no idea what Apple did with my 60GB music library or how to get it on my phone again". Thankfully I've been a spotify subscriber for years so I can just keep kicking that can down the road, but some day I'd like my music back.

When I was younger I bought 2 songs, burned them on a CD, then ripped it to get the mp3s.

Glad I had that mentality, Apple has never been trustworthy.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#125

Post by lstamour »

sbarre wrote: post #120

The elephant in the room here is that Apple forces you to use the Music app to manage/navigate/enjoy the music you have locally on your phone (I'm 90% sure I'm right about this). They maintain a monopoly on that functionality, and therefore when they make decisions that don't align with your desires or expectations, you have no recourse. You can't just use a different app - on your own device - that suits you better.…

Any app can save documents to local storage. As an example, I've 90GB of Spotify music on my phone, as I told it to download the entire "Liked songs" playlist. Google Play Music and YouTube Music also download to the phone. So no, you aren't forced to use Apple Music. You can even change Siri to use Spotify as a default in limited circumstances. It's not an iOS restriction the way independent browser implementations are restricted or how you can't set a default Mail app or Web Browser. There isn't even an iTunes app for syncing any more, so it's hard to argue that Apple has a giant advantage over third-parties ... except in how Apple gets a 30% cut of in-app subscriptions from third-parties, of course. And how asking Siri "What song is this?" always takes you to iTunes to buy it.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#126

Post by hombre_fatal »

72deluxe wrote: post #67
nobleach wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had one of those really nice 100GB music libraries that I had been ripping from CDs since 1998. (and Napster/WinMX/Kazaa/Limewire-ing because... I was young, stupid and poor) I had meticulously been fixing ID3 tags, and putting them into the folder structure that made me happy. Then one day, I did a new Mac setup, and forgot to tick the box that said, "let me manage my library layout" and BAM. iTunes moved everythi…

Surely that music library is important and cost you money? Why would you give your money to another service to listen to the same music again, that you already own? I ask this because I have about 900 albums on CD that I ripped and then stored away in the loft/under the stairs and could never envisage actually paying a streaming service to listen to stuff I actually have already bought. I mean, I have an iPod Classic…

Unless I'm mistaken, they're not talking about some cloud/streaming service, just exposing their music folder to iTunes.app so that iTunes can give them a GUI over it (like search/sorting).

Without the checkbox, iTunes employs its own local folder organization strategy and will update id3 tags and album art from fingerprint lookups.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#127

Post by kdot »

I hate that when I select a song from an album, all of the songs are queued up. Even though I just want to listen to a single track.

I also really dislike iTunes on Mac, it's like they stripped out all of the usability.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#128

Post by azinman2 »

danShumway wrote: post #101
Finnucane wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have different clients for different kinds of users. But then you would almost certainly have users complaining that they need more than one client to do what they want.

This would still (often) be strictly better than having those same users complain that there are no clients that do what they want. It's also an easily solveable problem if the APIs are actually open. If Apple put out three music clients, you would definitely get people complaining that they weren't unified. If Apple shipped an open iOS API that covered everything in their official client(s), somebody in the communit…

Apple does have a public API for Apple Music [1], as does Spotify [2]. In fact, I frequently use a 3rd party client [3] that's all about curated music leveraging the Spotify API to stream the tracks.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemusicapi

[2] https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/

[3] https://noonpacific.com

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#129

Post by pianoben »

I still lament the demise of Rdio - it truly did have the best UX of all the streaming players. How unfortunate that they couldn't make the business work!

Just about all of the gripes in TFA were non-issues or avoided with thoughtful design, way back in 2012.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#130

Post by jochs »

creato wrote: post #88
Someone1234 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What surprises me most about your post is that someone actually worked on Google Play Music for multiple years. Doing what? From what I could see, it shipped, then immediately turned into abandoned-ware which it still is today (in spite of being "replaced" by YouTube Music which is also abandoned-ware almost from its release). I actually still pay for GPM (for Ad-Free YouTube) but also pay for Amazon's Unlimited beca…

It may be abandonware, but it works well, and has very few bugs. I hope it stays abandoned in its current state for a long time.

I assume you're using it on Android and not on iOS. The Android client was actually really lovely from a UX perspective, even if I had some complaints about general functionality GPM was missing. When I switched to iOS this past year I immediately ditched GPM for Spotify because the interface was unintuitive and clunky and I haven't looked back.
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