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Nearly two decades later, have we made any progress? iTunes honestly confounds me. And it seems like the Spotify UI is deliberately trying to prevent me from fi

Nearly two decades later, have we made any progress? iTunes honestly confounds me. And it seems like the Spotify UI is deliberately trying to prevent me from finding the music I want to listen to.

anonymfus 8y ago
Who are we? Groove Music is much less skeuomorphic than Windows Media Player for example.
- afandian 8y ago
  "We" are no more than a rhetorical device! I think low quality UX is only really important when the content is tied to the presentation platform, blocking competition. Like iTunes when DRM was compulsory and Spotify. By design of content providers, I'm out of touch with competing player platforms.
mosselman 8y ago
Apple Music is unusable, I don't get what the underlying concept is. Spotify, at least compared to Apple Music, is pretty easy to use.
- threeseed 8y ago
  The concept is pretty simple. It's an app for listening to music. There is your personal library, recommendations, radio station etc. I honestly don't know how the app could be made any simpler.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > I don't get what the underlying concept is It's an app for listening to music. You get a search box and a list of music you've saved. What more concept is there to get?
  - Pulcinella 8y ago
    The “For you,” “Browse,” and “Radio” tabs in music.app are unnecessary. They are just ads for apple music. I also don’t like how much the music app advertises music I don’t own. I just want to listen to my music, not accidentally tap an album I don’t own and be taken to a store page to purchase it.
    - chipotle_coyote 8y ago
      In iTunes (which is what this thread is actually about), you can always uncheck the box "Show Apple Music Features." There is a similar slider control, "Show Apple Music," that can be turned off in the iOS Music Settings. (Also, given that many millions of us actually use Apple Music, describing these tabs as "just ads" is incorrect. They're tabs that do things. I'd agree that those tabs should be hidden by default if you're not an Apple Music subscriber, though.)
- copperx 8y ago
  The only thing that I miss from the Apple ecosystem is Apple Music. I like to listen to music by albums, and Apple Music does that wonderfully. Spotify seems to be tailored to consume music on a track by track basis.
- qt4apologist 8y ago
  Thank you! I agree completely. It's like there's some flow that it's optimized for, but I have no idea what that flow is. I want to find music, then play music. Half the time when I search, it doesn't find anything, even though I know it's there. The other half the time I search, it shows me an overwhelming number of possibilities, each slightly different, with no way to tell which was the one I intended. Then there's the "card" that pops up with what's playing, but which won't come up when I need it to, and always comes up when I'm trying to do something else. The buttons to do something with the music, like add it, remove it, etc. are never where I think they're going to be, so I end up playing point and click games like some bad adventure from the 90s. "Does this control do it? Nope. How 'bout this one? Nope. This one? That's it! I've unlocked a basic feature that should have been obvious!"
deergomoo 8y ago
iTunes’ days are limited I think. I’m honestly surprised it’s still alive; the introduction of iOS/UIKit-based apps to the Mac in Mojave seemed like the perfect time to EOL it in favour of separate Music, Videos, Podcasts etc apps as it is on iOS. They’ve been slowly stripping things out of iTunes into their own applications for years, and no recent Apple services use the iTunes branding (Apple Music, for example). I give it a couple of years before it’s replaced and left in the “Other” folder in /Applications
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- __david__ 8y ago
  I hope not. The is music app is woefully unfeatureful compared to iTunes. They may be stripping cruft from it but it can still do a million things that iOS cannot.
- desertrider12 8y ago
  The iOS music app has gone downhill just as much as desktop iTunes. Open it and the screen is filled with options I have never and will never use, except "Playlists". Then you open that and it only fits 4 playlists on the screen at a time, so you have to scroll very far to find the one you want. Ugh, just give me back the iOS 5 music app.
everyone 8y ago
Winamp is still the best.. srsly. Thats what I use... and on my Android phone I use 'Neutron', which is alright.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  Check out webamp if you haven't. It's Winamp 2 in your browser, Milkdrop included. https://webamp.org/ https://webamp.org/ https://github.com/captbaritone/webamp https://github.com/captbaritone/webamp https://github.com/jberg/butterchurn https://github.com/jberg/butterchurn
  - copperx 8y ago
    How ... does that work. Is that running Winamp on JS? or is it just a recreation?
    - wlesieutre 8y ago
      Recreation I think, but I haven't looked closely.
- billfruit 8y ago
  I thought foobar2000 had long replaced Winamp as the canonical music player on Windows.
  - JohnBooty 8y ago
    Foobar2000 is pretty much the only thing I miss about Windows. Very (intentionally) bare-bones by default but it can be configured/extended to be amazing.
    - AstralStorm 8y ago
      Not too barebones though. It has multiple playlists in tabs, fast type in search, good support for tags, decent seek bar and volume control. Good menu. Sensible file dialog instead of custom silliness. Easy handling of whole directories. It can handle thousands songs in a playlist and supports a lot of audio formats, perhaps the most of audio players out there. You even have queue if you wish.
cdoxsey 8y ago
Google's music app has issues too. It works ok in the browser. But on the phone and especially with android auto its so minimalist that its painful to use. In the car there's basically no way to play an album, which is like the one thing I actually want to do. Instead I'm greeted with 4 menu items I never use. It's sad because I know there are far better interfaces, but the reality of streaming means your media is locked behind an inferior product. I found a similar issue watching NHL games on nhl.tv and eventually found a script online to download the raw files and build an mkv out of them - no more buffering, can work around region restrictions with a vpn, and play it anywhere I want (like offline on a plane)... but it just seems so unnecessary to have to go through all that.
- ConceptJunkie 8y ago
  I find the Google Music App for Android to have a reasonable design... not great, but usable. What I can't deal with is the fact that just like Amazon, it never seems to have occurred to them that you might have a large music collection, and it's insanely slow at times, sometimes taking 10s of seconds to respond to a tap. You're right about the downside of streaming. I used to use Amazon until they killed their Cloud Music capability earlier this year, and I switched over to Google. Both services provide a lot of value, but in both cases my number 1 request would be to somehow allow third-party apps to access the cloud because the built-in apps are pretty awful.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
iTunes reached a peak around 8 versions ago. Every change since seems to have degraded something, hidden something else and made something take 4 more clicks than it used to. Each release gets rid of something decent. The desktop app seems like a case study in poor UX design. Current iOS thinks album art on the lock screen should need a magnifying glass and such a small space for title that every track I have scrolls. It's shit. It didn't used to be. It never reached great. Over on Android Google play can't stream reliably unless 5 bars of signal, but can't even give any buffer settings. In the real world it's simply shit and unusable unless you like a random length silence at least every 5 mins. Other apps figured out buffering a decade ago. I don't think it got better past Winamp.

Nearly two decades later, have we made any progress? iTunes honestly confounds me. And it seems like the Spotify UI is deliberately trying to prevent me from finding the music I want to listen to.

anonymfus 8y ago

Who are we? Groove Music is much less skeuomorphic than Windows Media Player for example.

afandian 8y ago
"We" are no more than a rhetorical device! I think low quality UX is only really important when the content is tied to the presentation platform, blocking competition. Like iTunes when DRM was compulsory and Spotify. By design of content providers, I'm out of touch with competing player platforms.

mosselman 8y ago

Apple Music is unusable, I don't get what the underlying concept is. Spotify, at least compared to Apple Music, is pretty easy to use.

threeseed 8y ago
The concept is pretty simple. It's an app for listening to music. There is your personal library, recommendations, radio station etc. I honestly don't know how the app could be made any simpler.
chrisseaton 8y ago
> I don't get what the underlying concept is It's an app for listening to music. You get a search box and a list of music you've saved. What more concept is there to get?
- Pulcinella 8y ago
  The “For you,” “Browse,” and “Radio” tabs in music.app are unnecessary. They are just ads for apple music. I also don’t like how much the music app advertises music I don’t own. I just want to listen to my music, not accidentally tap an album I don’t own and be taken to a store page to purchase it.
  - chipotle_coyote 8y ago
    In iTunes (which is what this thread is actually about), you can always uncheck the box "Show Apple Music Features." There is a similar slider control, "Show Apple Music," that can be turned off in the iOS Music Settings. (Also, given that many millions of us actually use Apple Music, describing these tabs as "just ads" is incorrect. They're tabs that do things. I'd agree that those tabs should be hidden by default if you're not an Apple Music subscriber, though.)
copperx 8y ago
The only thing that I miss from the Apple ecosystem is Apple Music. I like to listen to music by albums, and Apple Music does that wonderfully. Spotify seems to be tailored to consume music on a track by track basis.
qt4apologist 8y ago
Thank you! I agree completely. It's like there's some flow that it's optimized for, but I have no idea what that flow is. I want to find music, then play music. Half the time when I search, it doesn't find anything, even though I know it's there. The other half the time I search, it shows me an overwhelming number of possibilities, each slightly different, with no way to tell which was the one I intended. Then there's the "card" that pops up with what's playing, but which won't come up when I need it to, and always comes up when I'm trying to do something else. The buttons to do something with the music, like add it, remove it, etc. are never where I think they're going to be, so I end up playing point and click games like some bad adventure from the 90s. "Does this control do it? Nope. How 'bout this one? Nope. This one? That's it! I've unlocked a basic feature that should have been obvious!"

deergomoo 8y ago

iTunes’ days are limited I think. I’m honestly surprised it’s still alive; the introduction of iOS/UIKit-based apps to the Mac in Mojave seemed like the perfect time to EOL it in favour of separate Music, Videos, Podcasts etc apps as it is on iOS. They’ve been slowly stripping things out of iTunes into their own applications for years, and no recent Apple services use the iTunes branding (Apple Music, for example). I give it a couple of years before it’s replaced and left in the “Other” folder in /Applications

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
__david__ 8y ago
I hope not. The is music app is woefully unfeatureful compared to iTunes. They may be stripping cruft from it but it can still do a million things that iOS cannot.
desertrider12 8y ago
The iOS music app has gone downhill just as much as desktop iTunes. Open it and the screen is filled with options I have never and will never use, except "Playlists". Then you open that and it only fits 4 playlists on the screen at a time, so you have to scroll very far to find the one you want. Ugh, just give me back the iOS 5 music app.

everyone 8y ago

Winamp is still the best.. srsly. Thats what I use... and on my Android phone I use 'Neutron', which is alright.

wlesieutre 8y ago
Check out webamp if you haven't. It's Winamp 2 in your browser, Milkdrop included. https://webamp.org/ https://webamp.org/ https://github.com/captbaritone/webamp https://github.com/captbaritone/webamp https://github.com/jberg/butterchurn https://github.com/jberg/butterchurn
- copperx 8y ago
  How ... does that work. Is that running Winamp on JS? or is it just a recreation?
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    Recreation I think, but I haven't looked closely.
billfruit 8y ago
I thought foobar2000 had long replaced Winamp as the canonical music player on Windows.
- JohnBooty 8y ago
  Foobar2000 is pretty much the only thing I miss about Windows. Very (intentionally) bare-bones by default but it can be configured/extended to be amazing.
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    Not too barebones though. It has multiple playlists in tabs, fast type in search, good support for tags, decent seek bar and volume control. Good menu. Sensible file dialog instead of custom silliness. Easy handling of whole directories. It can handle thousands songs in a playlist and supports a lot of audio formats, perhaps the most of audio players out there. You even have queue if you wish.

cdoxsey 8y ago

Google's music app has issues too. It works ok in the browser. But on the phone and especially with android auto its so minimalist that its painful to use. In the car there's basically no way to play an album, which is like the one thing I actually want to do. Instead I'm greeted with 4 menu items I never use. It's sad because I know there are far better interfaces, but the reality of streaming means your media is locked behind an inferior product. I found a similar issue watching NHL games on nhl.tv and eventually found a script online to download the raw files and build an mkv out of them - no more buffering, can work around region restrictions with a vpn, and play it anywhere I want (like offline on a plane)... but it just seems so unnecessary to have to go through all that.

ConceptJunkie 8y ago
I find the Google Music App for Android to have a reasonable design... not great, but usable. What I can't deal with is the fact that just like Amazon, it never seems to have occurred to them that you might have a large music collection, and it's insanely slow at times, sometimes taking 10s of seconds to respond to a tap. You're right about the downside of streaming. I used to use Amazon until they killed their Cloud Music capability earlier this year, and I switched over to Google. Both services provide a lot of value, but in both cases my number 1 request would be to somehow allow third-party apps to access the cloud because the built-in apps are pretty awful.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

iTunes reached a peak around 8 versions ago. Every change since seems to have degraded something, hidden something else and made something take 4 more clicks than it used to. Each release gets rid of something decent. The desktop app seems like a case study in poor UX design. Current iOS thinks album art on the lock screen should need a magnifying glass and such a small space for title that every track I have scrolls. It's shit. It didn't used to be. It never reached great. Over on Android Google play can't stream reliably unless 5 bars of signal, but can't even give any buffer settings. In the real world it's simply shit and unusable unless you like a random length silence at least every 5 mins. Other apps figured out buffering a decade ago. I don't think it got better past Winamp.