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iOS 13's Music App Sucks

samuelstevens.me

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Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#161

Post by CodeSheikh »

CharlesW wrote: post #106
okennedy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, the UX has gotten dramatically worse for people who do manage their own music libraries as well. The entire UI has been restructured around music discovery... which is appropriate for Apple Music, but really gets in the way when trying to find a specific album or track (e.g., I need to click through about three screens just to get to the album list, and there's no way to set the default). It's tryin…

> …really gets in the way when trying to find a specific album or track… When I launch Apple Music, I just tap Search and can constrain it to my library with one touch. I feel like I can get to any album in a few seconds. What you're doing isn't wrong, of course, but it doesn't seem like the designed-for path.

When I select Search box I want it to default to Apple's search rather than my collection. For me that has been a pain point. Clearly from your case, various users respond differently to features.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#162

Post by nomel »

tzs wrote: post #82
DavideNL wrote: post #42

I have both Apple Music and Spotify, and i also dislike Apple's Music app; First, it deleted ALL my playlists on a random day for no apparent reason, and i couldn't restore them from backups because apparently the playlists are stored in the cloud or whatever and not in a local file. Also, after converting my personal library to "iCloud", Apple replaced all my specific versions of songs with crappy alternative versio…

> Spotify's user interface is so much better, i can't understand how anyone would prefer Apple Music. I've been very unimpressed with Spotify's iOS and iPadOS interface lately. I was OK with it for years when all I would do is either (1) tell it to play one of my playlists, or (2) find an album via search and tell it to play that. Lately, though, I've been using Spotify to listen to music during timed activities. I k…

You could also set an alarm in iOS, using the sleep timer function, to stop whatever is currently playing [1].

1. https://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/08/07/how-to-set-timer-st...

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#163

Post by deergomoo »

_bxg1 wrote: post #13
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…

Yeah, as an Apple Music user with no iTunes history, I'd say that the mobile app - like most of iOS - is a bit confusing at first but generally pleasant to use once you acclimate. The Mac app, on the other hand, has clearly received less attention. I've encountered several bugs, and right-clicking a track within the Apple Music app to see an option titled "Show in Apple Music" betrays a distinctly un-Apple-like level…

The Mac Apple Music app is just rebranded iTunes with a lot of the kitchen-sink stuff removed. It even has the weird modal preference window that none of Apple’s other applications have.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#164

Post by jjtheblunt »

the_gastropod wrote: post #66

Anyone remember Rdio? It was such a beautifully designed app. It's wild that Spotify and Apple failed to learn anything from them. Granted, Rdio did go bankrupt, but I think that had more to do with record label negotiations, and less with their app design. But who knows.

Ironically, I used Rdio while working in engineering at Apple, and miss it too.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#165

Post by Finnucane »

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…

And then people would complain that there were 1200 apps in the app store that did the same thing, and most of them badly.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#166

Post by mcpeepants »

danShumway wrote: post #92
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…

> It is pretty much impossible to build a music UX that optimizes for all three of these user types This is a good argument for not tying music subscriptions to a specific client -- ie, allowing 3rd-party clients that are optimized for my specific user-type to freely hook into and stream from my Google Play Music subscription via an official API. The Google Play Music client is not optimized for users like me. I'm su…

Google Play Music happens to be absolutely perfect for my usage (including the ability to upload my own tracks AND stream them). I'm extremely annoyed they are killing it off as I've tried everything else and it just doesn't work for me. The replacement YouTube Music is... abysmal. Well IMO anyway.

Only pointing this out because it speaks to your point. I think you're spot-on that APIs and embracing 3rd-party clients are the way forward. Not just for music, but any service where the primary UI challenge is making everyone happy (hint: a lot of services). I'd instantly support and switch to a service like GPM that put APIs first, assuming all the same back end functionality and catalog was available. Even if the "official" client didn't suit my needs.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#167

Post by krrrh »

CharlesW wrote: post #106
okennedy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, the UX has gotten dramatically worse for people who do manage their own music libraries as well. The entire UI has been restructured around music discovery... which is appropriate for Apple Music, but really gets in the way when trying to find a specific album or track (e.g., I need to click through about three screens just to get to the album list, and there's no way to set the default). It's tryin…

> …really gets in the way when trying to find a specific album or track… When I launch Apple Music, I just tap Search and can constrain it to my library with one touch. I feel like I can get to any album in a few seconds. What you're doing isn't wrong, of course, but it doesn't seem like the designed-for path.

Yeah, Apple Music is optimized for people with large music libraries where search is the only reasonable path especially on a small screen.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#168

Post by Invictus0 »

That app has gotten worse and worse every year. I get that they need to cater to Apple Music subscribers: fine. Why can't there be a setting to turn off all the Apple Music stuff for nonsubscribers? And for people like myself that really really hate the app, why lock down the APIs to make third party music apps shit as well? It's just so frustrating, the music app really has been terrible since somewhere around iOS 8.

Re: iOS 13's Music App Sucks

#170

Post by api »

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…

> Apple's customers have plowed tons of $$$ to "own" their libraries, and Apple is doing the right thing to bring them along.

This is why I stuck with Apple Music. I was hearing rumors that they'd eliminate music purchases in which case I was going to dump them.

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