21 ms·

iOS 13's Music App Sucks

• cyxxon 7y ago
  I don't use Apple Music, but Spotify, so I am a little confused about the idea that Spotify does not have a library, or "the concept of a library". I mainly use Sptify via their library, and only rarely use curated playlists or anything like that. Am I missing something here?
  • npo9 7y ago
    Can I rip my own CDs and import them into Spotify or am I limited to the music provided by the Spotify streaming service? I think this is what is meant by a “music library”
    • SamuelAdams 7y ago
      Yes, this feature has been available for a while. You must have a Premium subscription to do it on mobile, though. https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/listen-to-local-files/ https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/listen...
      • npo9 7y ago
        Cool! This feature was not available when I last used Spotify, which was admittedly years ago.
    • dehrmann 7y ago
      I don't know the current state and never used it much, but you can specify local folders with music that it will play, but it doesn't upload tracks to the cloud, and I'm not sure how well it works with search.
    • PascLeRasc 7y ago
      Yes, if you do this on the desktop app they'll transfer to your phone's local storage over wifi. It's so much easier than trying to figure out how to get music onto an iPhone the Apple way.
  • peapicker 7y ago
    I guess after clicking on "Your Library" he isn't switching to the "Artists" or "Albums" tabs. Then again, I don't know what it looks like when you're not a subscriber. The Spotify app doesn't "see" your music in your iTunes library, perhaps that is the complaint?
  • samstevens 7y ago
    Apple Music (especially when coming from iTunes) has a very tight concept of a "Library". If you add an album to your library, all the songs are also in your library. If you add a playlist, you have the option to add all the songs to your library. In my (arguably limited) experience with Spotify Premium, I can't browse all my songs in my "Library". If I'm missing something in the UI, please let me know; I would love to hear otherwise.
    • cyxxon 7y ago
      I kind of miss the feature that I can upload local files to Spotify (I can, but it is not as seamlessly integrated as I want), but when I "like" an album on Spotify, it is added to my library. I think that the individual songs are not added in the Songs tab. This is a bit different maybe, but in a way, it also keeps that list uncluttered. That might be the problem? So you have the song in your library, you just have to navigate to it via the album. What I really, really miss is hierarchical filtering/navigating. Genre - Artist - Album. Maybe Release Year. Whatever criteria floats my boat. But so far I have not seen one of the big streaming apps do that, and at the moment I am using Spotify, because it most closely aligns to my UX preferences... but of course YMMV.
  • jschwartzi 7y ago
    Yeah, I came here to say this. If you want to access all the songs you've ever liked or added to a playlist or saved then you literally press the "Your Library" button at the bottom of the screen and you can sort by playlist, artist, or album. The author is totally ignorant of this fact.
• rconti 7y ago
  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.
  • m0xte 7y ago
    Spotify kept removing what I listen to so it got canned pretty quick.
    • balls187 7y ago
      That is really annoying, but I bet it's not spotify per-se, but the music's copyright owners wishes.
      • rbinv 7y ago
        It's a good thing those wishes can't delete MP3s.
        • balls187 7y ago
          In many ways I agree with you. As you have paid for a license to listen to that music in that specific format, that should be 100% irrevocable.
      • genf 7y ago
        That’s not relevant.
  • RHSeeger 7y ago
    My wife has been fighting with iTunes screwing up her music library for years. It's a constant pain point for her.
  • SamuelAdams 7y ago
    Dunno if it'll work perfectly, but if you have the music on your PC you may be able to use the VLC app for iOS [1]. I use it for streaming movies / tv / music on my NAS but I think it can do some sort of PC sync. [1]: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html
• iwalton3 7y ago
  I've been using the Neutron media player app for years now. It allows you to play most file formats (including opus), supports navigation by files, and allows you to upload files via FTP to bypass iTunes. It's also one of those rare applications these days where nearly everything is configurable.
  • NickBusey 7y ago
    This looks quite nice, thanks for the recommendation.
• poulsbohemian 7y ago
  He's completely right about Apple Music and it's been bad since long before iOS 13. The navigation is incredibly difficult to understand. I get very frustrated about why I have to both tell Apple I love something and put it in my library before their algorithms are smart enough to figure out that maybe I like that band / song and they should find related music. The Spotify discovery algorithms are better in every way. So why even bother with Apple Music - it's really simple and it's why I see Apple services being huge... you get an Apple card and its cash back will pay your Apple Music and Apple TV+ and Apple News+ bill every month. Why pay for another music service when Apple Music is "good enough" and is "free" at that point?
  • dangus 7y ago
    That doesn’t make sense, the cash back could just be cash. It doesn’t make those services magically free.
    • ulfw 7y ago
      Exactly. You can use CASH back for any further credit card purchase, including a Spotify subscription for that matter. Wouldn't call Spotify "free" though.
    • poulsbohemian 7y ago
      Except there's a cycle - you get 3% back on Apple purchases. Notice I said "free" with air quotes - sure, you are spending money, but you are also being rewarded for staying in the Apple walled garden. So back to my point - why pay $9-$15/mo for Spotify when if you play the game, Apple has a "good enough" product and is incentivizing you monetarily to the point that their services become "included" rather than a separate line item in your monthly budget. Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but to a wide swath in middle America it does.
      • dangus 7y ago
        That still doesn’t make sense. You could use the cash back on a Spotify subscription just the same. The Apple Card’s credit card rewards aren’t even that good compared to what other large banks offer (e.g. the Citi Double Cash card).
• throwaway55554 7y ago
  I don't use the Music App because I don't maintain all my mp3s in iTunes and without iTunes you can't (keep my honest here) get your mp3s into the Music App.
• oflannabhra 7y ago
  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 is doing the right thing to bring them along. That complexity explains the difference between "hearting" a song/playlist/station and "plus'ing" one, or "clouding" one, amongst others. I actually appreciate Apple's queue approach, which has a long history in iTunes. I love being able to insert or reorder songs without having to "recover" the previous state. That may not be everyone's cup of tea, or mental model, but it isn't bad design. I do agree with the author that configurability of the tabs and the main buttons of the Now Playing screen would be handy. I know of several changes I'd make if able. I do think that there are several good criticisms here, but when the first paragraph includes a lot of "I don't care about"s, that is a good sign to me that the author is not thinking about the design challenges holistically.
  • _bxg1 7y ago
    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 of holistic consideration. As a technical user I know what it means is "Show in the Apple Music streaming content instead of my library", but it's an incredibly bad look for a company that historically has prided itself on UX consideration. The desktop app is still "fine". It gets the job done. It's just surprising to see this sort of thing in the flagship app of the largest tech company in the world's much-heralded "services" push.
    • Rebelgecko 7y ago
      I may be one of the few people using Apple Music on Android, but unfortunately that app is incredibly buggy too. If you're connected to WiFi but not connected to the internet, it takes 60 seconds after you hit play for a song to actually start. Presumably there's some network call that takes 60 seconds to timeout, but it's really frustrating to make the UI nonresponsive in the meantime.
• ringzero 7y ago
  Apple Music, and particularly iTunes Match, are the opposite of "just works". I wanted to switch back from Spotify, but I found that Match had made a complete mess of my library. Half of my album art gone. Albums were striped with some tracks that were replaced with the iTunes store versions, and some left as my uploaded MP3 V0 versions (most obvious because, even with Sound Check on, the volume levels between each track differ greatly post-iTunes Match). I've been able to look past a lot of the decline in Apple's software quality, but the data corruption problems springing up (Catalina Mail, iOS 13 Photos incidents also come to mind) are a bridge too far. The primary reason I avoid turning on a new Apple cloud service is that it's likely it'll do something highly undesirable to my data.
  • dehrmann 7y ago
    I still remember when Bono showed up on my iPhone and refused to leave.
  • ghaff 7y ago
    Yeah. I cleaned up my library recently. I think I had about four copies in various directories and wanted to get back to a single carnival copy. Whether for Match or other reasons a decent chunk of ripped music was missing. Not enough to just chuck the whole thing and restart from scratch. But enough to waste a day or so of my time.
  • derefr 7y ago
    Odd trick: if you have HQ MP3s, and you want them to get “matched” instead of “uploaded”, transcode them to iTunes Plus (256kpbs constrained-VBR max quality AAC) format. iTunes will then be far more likely to get a fingerprint match, for some reason.
  • dave5104 7y ago
    Are you referring to the standalone $25/year iTunes Match subscription? As an alternate data point, I've subscribed to that service for years now (no Apple Music streaming) and have not had any major problems. Lots of custom music tracks as well, which Match has always respected and synced properly across my iDevices. The only problem I had when first signing up years back was that one of my songs was replaced with the wrong song--but that bad match has since been fixed.
• Demiurge 7y ago
  So did 12, 11, ... 7, when they stopped allowing to sort songs and albums, which worked in 6. Things got much worse once they added Apple Music, it's been a ridiculously painful minesweeper game not to sign up. I buy most of my music on bandcamp, and upload the mp3s through iTunes. As long as that works, I will never subscribe, so stop forcing me...
• dangus 7y ago
  > Except that I already pay for Apple Music, I don’t use these tabs, and I’m considering leaving Apple Music for Spotify Stop ranting and do it. Vote with your wallet. Your $10 tells Apple that everything is fine. I don’t subscribe to any music, personally. I use the Music app with Apple Music disabled (Settings > Music > Show Apple Music (Off)).
  • samstevens 7y ago
    If you disable Apple Music, what happens to the tabs? Do you only have Library and Search? And $10 for unlimited music ($5 because I'm a student) is unbeatable. I just wish the app was better.
    • tolqen 7y ago
      Library, Radio, Search
    • chungus_khan 7y ago
      I wouldn't say unbeatable by any stretch, considering that's pretty much the standard price for that.
  • Analemma_ 7y ago
    > Stop ranting and do it. Vote with your wallet. Your $10 tells Apple that everything is fine. There are annoying things I can find with every platform/company and their associated fans, but this is a sickness that seems unique to Apple users: they gripe and complain, but-- sometimes in the first sentence of their post!-- vow that they will never switch to something else. Which makes all their complaining pointless, if Apple knows it has their money regardless. It's like announcing ahead of time that you have a crap hand and expecting to be able to bluff anyway.
    • endorphone 7y ago
      "but this is a sickness that seems unique to Apple users: they gripe and complain, but-- sometimes in the first sentence of their post!-- vow that they will never switch to something else" That is an interesting caricature. It's particularly interesting to me because while I've heard many people profess that they'll never use an Apple product -- a weird hill to climb and define ones id by -- I've seldom heard an Apple user say they would never use a competitor. In real life every product has faults. I don't subscribe to Apple Music but instead use Spotify -- I could name a dozen very irritating behaviors of the product (some absolutely bizarre elements, like trying to clear a queue of songs). That doesn't mean I should cancel and wipe my hands of it. In this case the complaint is that this guy -- who never fulfilled the caricature, though by your post I imagine most assume he must have -- doesn't immediately cancel because of some UI grievances, when every competitor offers its own problems.
• burntcookie90 7y ago
  I find that it works quite well. This is definitely more of a "rant" than anything else of a user that doesn't like where things are going.
• alexashka 7y ago
  Music app sucks, this guy's attitude sucks. Do you see a pattern here? Be the change you want to see in the world Samuel.
  • stanferder 7y ago
    That's what he's doing though. Change flows from discontent. Complaints are the fuel of improvement.
    • viburnum 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
      • stanferder 7y ago
        Interesting, thanks for the pointer.
  • chapium 7y ago
    It is quite a long winded rant when one could simply use a different music app.
• Nextgrid 7y ago
  I was considering making a blog post comparing the design of the "golden age" of iOS versus now. I see someone already beat me to that and am grateful for it. Look at the screenshots in the previous versions compared to now. Design is down to personal preference (personally I think the earlier versions had more "rich" design and a personality, bits of which were lost with each upgrade) but you can't argue that we are losing functionality, despite screen sizes going up and having more than enough space to accommodate all the features.
• mrtksn 7y ago
  Is it possible that some un-learning needs to be done here? I know some people who cannot get over Winamp, hate everything that is not like Winamp. I don't share the same frustrations with the author, so the correct title maybe should be "iOS 13's Music App Sucks (according to me)". My music listening process is like "I hear a song, ask Siri about the name of the song, tap on the song listen to the song and start a radio with that song and if another song comes to my mind search for it add it as play next. If I like s song I add it to my library". I almost always listen to music like that, only the beginning would be different(Instead of asking Siri, a song would come to my mind and start from there). I briefly got frustrated when Apple hide the Love button but quickly forgot about it. Anyway, I don't believe in playlists, I believe in moods. Apple Music works great for me while Spotify was the worst among many. With Spotify, I am supposed to do labour in order to listen to music. That's not me, I don't chase playlists. Youtube is also great, they also manage to suggest very relevant music videos when I start from something.
  • samstevens 7y ago
    We just have different music listening processes. My process used to be supported (browsing my Library by Artist, Album, Genre, etc.) and got pushed to the side to support a process more like yours (Radio, Apple's curated mood playlists, etc.). I wish Apple's designers didn't limit my process in order to make room for other peoples'.
    • klodolph 7y ago
      I still browse my library by artist, album, and genre. All I have to do is press the library tab, and the app seems to remember its position so I don’t even have to do that. This doesn’t outrage me and I don’t understand the complaint.
• baggy_trough 7y ago
  Try the dumpster fire that is CarPlay Music - for example, get to a complete album from a song in your library, if the entire album isn't in your library. Virtually impossible without going on a verbal text adventure with 50% Siri misfires.
• barrowclift 7y ago
  While I agree iOS 13’s Music.app is pretty shoddy in many respects, there’s plenty of alternatives other than Spotify that might better fit their requirements. (Marvis Pro, Soor, etc.) I consolidate the biggest players yearly in a review, which might be helpful for the author’s search: https://barrowclift.me/post/second-annual-ios-music-player-competition https://barrowclift.me/post/second-annual-ios-music-player-c...
  • samstevens 7y ago
    This looks incredible! I've bookmarked this to check out later, but as an immediate question: do any of these support Apple Music/Spotify as a backend for downloading music? I'd prefer to stick with a monthly subscription for access to all music if at all possible. Edit: also, you have an incredibly pretty website.
    • barrowclift 7y ago
      Thanks for the kind words, Sam :) Unfortunately, I don't believe there's any third-party offering on iOS that supports downloading music within the app from Apple Music or Spotify, I'm fairly certain you'd need to kick off downloads from the first-party player itself. If any folks here are aware of a third-party player that does support this, I'd be interested to know as well.
    • ubercow13 7y ago
      Some support acting as a client for Apple Music, including Marvis. The API is quite comprehensive, they can do most stuff the official app can do, including libary curation and discovery stuff. One exception is downloading songs in advance (you can add new music to your library, but not download it to your device; however if you go back to the Apple app to kick off the downloads, the downloaded songs are played through the 3rd party app after that). If you just add to your library and stream, you wouldn't need to do that.
  • hadrien01 7y ago
    Your page is amazing! I love that you made small videos for all players, it really helps to see how the app works
• ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
  Spotify rules. It's great seeing a company not a part of the big 5 just dominate them all in this space. At least until they get purchased...
• meerita 7y ago
  Apple Music and Google Play, both applications made by managers hungry and desperate to generate profits but very unconcerned about the usability of the apps themselves. The sad thing is that you can't make apps that compete with Apple Music or Google Play. I would have already paid 100 dollars for a well made Winamp for me.
  • wool_gather 7y ago
    Cesium is a competitor/replacement for on-device library playback on iOS. Spotify competes for streaming. Not clear what you mean by "can't make apps that compete".
    • andrewzah 7y ago
      Spotify can't compete on the apple homepod, which is a huge (primary?) selling point for apple music. Sure, you can use airplay, but that's more involved than "hey siri". Being able to just use your voice is great when you're cooking or washing the dishes. Cesium is a great app.
• DavideNL 7y ago
  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 versions, without notifying me beforehand. Very frustrating. Spotify's user interface is so much better, i can't understand how anyone would prefer Apple Music. Also i much prefer Spotify's radio/recommendations.
  • Xavdidtheshadow 7y ago
    Spotify has better discovery and recommendations, that's for sure. The killer feature for me is that Apple Music makes it seamless to add local mp3s into my library (accessible from anywhere). Spotify has this functionality, but you have to sync your phone on the same network as your computer and leave the app(s) open and go through a whole song-and-dance. On AM, I just click "Add to iCloud" in iTunes and suddenly that track is available to stream from any device I own. The seamless integration is really a killer feature.
    • DavideNL 7y ago
      > The killer feature for me is that Apple Music makes it seamless to add local mp3s into my library Yea i agree, that's the only reason i still use Apple Music next to Spotify, since some albums are not available in Spotify.
  • tzs 7y ago
    > 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 know I'm going to spend N minutes on the activity, and want to queue up N minutes of music. So before starting the activity I go through my playlists picking songs and queuing them, or thinking of other songs that I'm the mood for, searching for them, and queuing them, trying to queue a little over N minutes. Should be easy, right? From the song listing in a playlist or search, queue the song and keep a running total in my head of the times. Occasionally pop over to the queue view to check the total time. Nope. That doesn't work because the stupid thing does not show the song times in playlist listing, search listings, or any other kind of listing I've found. The only way I know to find the length of a song is to start playing it and then look at the playback display which shows time elapses and time remaining. Well, that's not quite true. You could also put the song by itself in a playlist, because it will show you the total length of a playlist. The partial workaround is to make a new playlist, add the songs to that instead of the queue so that I can at least see the total time, and then queue the whole playlist when I've got my N minutes in it. People have been asking for them to fix this for at least 5 years [1]. [1] https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Queue-length-in-time/idi-p/770047 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Queue-length-i...
• derefr 7y ago
  I feel like Music.app is a pair of similar apps squished together, when they share no common frontend functionality and work far better apart: • Apple Music (the subscription service) • iTunes (the library with syncing and an optional digital music locker subscription-service) Each of the two has its own obvious top-level navigation. Each of the two has its own independent backend services (e.g. the recommendations in Apple Music; the iTunes Store and the cloud music locker in the iTunes app.) They would also share some backend services (e.g. the object storage of songs that are streamed in Apple Music vs. “matched“ in iTunes) but other iOS apps share these services too (e.g. Apple Podcasts, Apple TV.) Why are they the same app?
  • bryanmgreen 7y ago
    Was looking for this comment. I can see a world where they exist together in one universal library, but if they can't figure that out through good UI and UX, they 100% should be two. Unfortunately they want to pressure everyone into buying a music subscription, so that won't happen.
  • chipotle_coyote 7y ago
    Well, for one possible answer: I personally don't want "music that I have added to my library by ripping or buying digital files of" and "music that I have added to my library by clicking 'favorite' in a streaming music service" to be separate libraries. "Okay, I want to listen to a song or two from the most recent album by The Black Keys, so I'll go to this app, but now I'd like to listen to ELO's Greatest Hits, so I'll go to that app." I just want to say "I would like to listen to my music."
    • derefr 7y ago
      That's nice if you actually subscribe to Apple Music. As it stands, searching your library in Music.app returns results from Apple Music, with ~3 extra taps required to see the results from your own library, and often the inability to even navigate to a result in your own library if it matches the name of a title that's been delicensed from Apple Music.
• fit2rule 7y ago
  After years of misery trying to just have a plain old music collection, fighting Apple all the way, I've built myself .. a plain old music collection. Just a filesystem with all my music, collected over the decades, carefully organised by hand. All it took was the ability to manipulate and administer a filesystem - a skill that, it seems, all the major players are hell bent on devolving for all their users. I taught my kids to use the filesystem. They find stuff faster than any of their peers. I use this same technique for bookmarks too - if I like a page, I print it to .PDF and put it in the filesystem. 15 years of .PDF-based bookmarks later, I don't need the Internet to find stuff that I've read years ago. Its still right there. Seriously, kids. The filesystem is your friend. Please stop teaching the users that its hard. Its really not.
• Shebanator 7y ago
  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 tracks in their personal collections. Some are all about their personal custom playlists, and don't care about music libraries or radio stations at all. It is pretty much impossible to build a music UX that optimizes for all three of these user types, since they want such different things. Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play Music have all made different choices in how they address this. Some of those were (IMHO) good choices, others weren't. But it is dangerous to assume that what works well for you will work well for others. The discussion about the queue here is a great example: one person hates it with a passion, another loves it.
  • lbotos 7y ago
    Can we all agree that the "now playing" screen is objectively worse. I had to google how to set repeat and shuffle. (You have to "scroll up" from the bottom. Not swipe, but a scroll like motion. I studied Human Computer Interaction and interfaces in college . It's hidden and unintuitive for no good reason.
    • TaylorGood 7y ago
      Yes x100. Or press the 3 dots. Finding the repeat function is unnecessary testing. Each time.
    • swasheck 7y ago
      I’m a Google Play customer who is trying out Apple Music right now. There are many things I love. Obviously the seamless interaction with other Apple properties (e.g. CarKit) is great. I prefer the feedback that lets me know about the status of my song downloads, over against Google’s. I like Apple’s library and something about the way the base experience works feels more natural to me. This is my biggest complaint. How in the world do I get off of the lyrics display and then how do I shuffle and repeat? Also, if I want more by an artist than what I have in my library, I get to the artist and then look at the library and then have to swipe up once or twice in order to get the “show more by this artist” option. Minor annoyance and I’ve learned the pattern, it just took a bit.
• bryanmgreen 7y ago
  I no longer use Spotify, instead going for Amazon HD because the sound is so much better, that being said... Spotify UI and UX is so significantly light years better than any other music app on the market. Not perfect, but it should be a model for everyone else. Back when I used it, I even liked how they integrated my personal library.
  • andrewzah 7y ago
    Spotify premium has 320kbp/s as an option. You are not going to hear any difference from that versus FLAC/ALAC/PCM audio. This has been debunked to death many, many times over. It's definitely better than non-premium spotify, though. Bandcamp is also a good place to find FLAC-quality files and keep them forever without DRM.
• ngcc_hk 7y ago
  I worry about the file sync more than the music part. New one I can sync or Copy file fine. Now you can copy but never when it finished.
• larrik 7y ago
  My complaints, with a library primarily MP3's: 1) It often forgets where I am in a song, or in a playlist. Or which playlist 2) After "upgrading" to iOS 13, all my songs now have "jump forward/backward 30 seconds" buttons instead of "Next/Prev". Wat 3) Sometimes it jumps into the middle of the next song. It's done this for like 5 years, although 13 is the first time to actually realize it's the middle of the song, so I can at least rewind. 4) I sync it to a single iTunes library, and every time I back up my phone, it duplicates any playlist I've used since last time... (probably more an iTunes complaint, which is a dumpster fire and has been since version 1.0) It's generally gotten worse over the years. The Radio feature used to be awesome (way better than Spotify's), but now it's a paid feature? I love that you can "Play Next" vs "Play After" in iOS 13, though.
• andrewzah 7y ago
  Some annoying things about apple music: * I can't easily see the songs that I liked while listening to a station or in general. Spotify saves these under "liked songs" and "liked from radio". going through these later at my leisure and adding them to relevant playlists is much nicer than making me add each song to a playlist as I listen to it. * there's no good web ui like spotify. beta.music.apple.com has existed for a while[0] but is buggy and randomly stops playing, forcing a refresh. I can't edit playlists other than adding songs to them. I use linux so I would have to use wine, which is not preferable. * spotify has 5 daily new mixes based on the genres/artists I listened to. apple music has 3 weekly playlists, updated on friday, and one is just a rehash of what I listened to: "Favorites Mix", "Chill Mix", "New Mix". If I can't have daily updates, I'd rather have it update on mondays... compare those to my spotify mixes: #1: japanese/foreign music. #2: bill evans, cannonball adderly-esque jazz. #3: david bowie and rush. etc.. these are actually compelling based on my mood that day. * on the music app homepage, the recently added music section takes up way too much space with only 2 album pictures per row. * when I play a song, album, or playlist, it repeats forever instead of stopping or suggesting similar music like spotify. * the radio tab is garbage, showing me genres and artists I never listen to. I don't care about "Top 100 songs", as should be evident from the songs I listen to and save. spotify's homepage recommendations always felt they were kinda close or at least attempting to take my preferences into account. apple's recommendations are just whatever is new in the (mainstream) music world, which is almost always irrelevant to me. * the music app's UX in general is bad, it's quite clunky compared to spotify's app. * spotify's app detects when you're driving and shows a simplistic interface with huge buttons. all music apps should do this. * translation of foreign song titles is very annoying when I can speak the language. I understand why apple and youtube do this, but please give us the option to disable it for specific languages or in general. My phone is in Korean anyway. Positives of the apple music app: * the lyrics viewer is much better in my opinion. I hardly used this in spotify's app, but I often enable it in apple's app. * apple's music selection is very good. I only had one instance of not being able to find a song that I had on spotify, and that was a relatively new japanese album. I keep apple music because my family uses the homepod daily in the kitchen, and my mom is used to the app now on our shared plan. Plus it would be a pain to re-make my playlists again. But if I can find a way to have siri integration with spotify on the homepod, I would switch back in a heartbeat. I'm disappointed because apple has the money and talent to pull off a really good music app, and they push out something mediocre, as if they don't really care that much. I hate apple's new UX choices in general as they seem to be made for older people with bad vision. (this wouldn't be bad if it were an accessibility option like font size. as it is, having few things take up so much space is annoying.) [0]: https://beta.music.apple.com https://beta.music.apple.com
• jvreeland 7y ago
  The podcast app is trash too
  • andrewzah 7y ago
    Agreed. I find the Overcast app to be quite nice. I've been using that for 2+ years with few complaints.
    • jvreeland 7y ago
      I really don't like overcast : ( I've tried to switch several times, especially since the podcast redesign and I just can't.
      • kristofferR 7y ago
        Yeah, Overcast is extremely weirdly designed in some places - the "Unplayed" tab contains played content for example.
        • jvreeland 7y ago
          Yeah basically the same stuff i dislike about the 'Listen now' and other weird modes.
          • kristofferR 7y ago
            This made me look for an alternative, and I found Castro, which I love! The UI is miles better! https://castro.fm/ https://castro.fm/
      • mopsi 7y ago
        Give Pocket Casts a try: https://www.pocketcasts.com/ https://www.pocketcasts.com/
        • andrewzah 7y ago
• the_gastropod 7y ago
  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.
  • jjtheblunt 7y ago
    Ironically, I used Rdio while working in engineering at Apple, and miss it too.
  • kylehotchkiss 7y ago
    Pandora bought them (I think?) and never really took advantage of their design focus. I miss Rdio everyday still. I'm nostalgic for it the same way I was for Palm's WebOS. Looked great but felt it never got enough eyes. Nowaways I'm on Apple Music. Little clunky, but at least the apps are native and not webviews. I expect Apple to improve it over the next 2-3 years though, they've made Photos apps pretty compelling over the years. I don't want to pay for any service that releases a "Mac App" that's just a website with MacOS chrome.
• blobs 7y ago
  Because the UX suffers from UI design that is driven by marketing. UI design should be driven by a passion to create the best UX, but that's almost impossible in this $$$ world..
• efrafa 7y ago
  What drives me crazy is that at some point music app stopped recognizing my artworks in interpret view. They all have generic icons despite I have them all filled out in iTunes :(
• viburnum 7y ago
  The music app is also really slow to boot up. Ten years ago it was automatic. Just a huge performance regression.
  • Nextgrid 7y ago
    I have suspicions the new app is a web app just like parts of iTunes are web apps.
    • viburnum 7y ago
      I had suspected it was Swift but your idea makes more sense.
• vlucas 7y ago
  > First things first, why do I get a tab bar with 5 icons, and I only ever use 2 of them? I don’t care about “For You”, “Browse” and I certainly don’t give a rat’s ass about ”Radio”. You lost me on the opening sentence. I didn't even bother to read the rest of the article. I was expecting this to be based some some valid objective reasons why the app sucks, not personal preferences. I use Spotify, and have found the "Radio" feature really handy to find new music that is similar to music I already like - especially when creating a new radio station from a custom playlist I made or artist I like.
  • jkmcf 7y ago
    A subsequent sentence mentioned no longer being able to customize the tab bar, which was his real complaint.
    • pwinnski 7y ago
      Except he can disable Apple Music in settings, eliminating the tabs he hates.
  • andrewzah 7y ago
    It would be prudent to not be judgemental off of one sentence, particularly because the author was discussing something else. Apple music has a station (radio) feature, which you can start from a song or album. It functions similarly to spotify's radio feature and is not what the author was talking about. Apple's "radio" tab, not feature, shows you an advertisement for Beats 1 taking up half of the screen, then "recently played" taking up 30% of the screen, then things like "upcoming shows" and "broadcast radio". After a lot of scrolling, there is an alphabetical list of genres. I find almost all of this fairly irrelevant (I already have a podcasts app, as does apple), and the one thing I would expect to see ("Recommended for you") is absent. Is it so hard to give me some recommended stations before all of that other stuff? Compare this to spotify's homepage which shows me music categories I actually listen to, and six daily playlists made for me which all reference different categories I listen to and make playlists of. Compare these screenshots of apple music's radio tab [0] and spotify's homepage [1]. Spotify at least attempts to show me relevant content, unlike apple. So in ~6 months of usage I haven't used either of those tabs. The author also makes actual points in the next sentence and the rest of the article. edit: apple music does have "For you" tab, I had a brainfart when writing this. I originally compared it to the middle tab, which is "Browse" I think? (둘러보기 in Korean). [0]: https://i.imgur.com/Pa6PKdM.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Pa6PKdM.jpg [1]: https://i.imgur.com/DRCSOw5.jpg https://i.imgur.com/DRCSOw5.jpg
• egypturnash 7y ago
  My main beef with Music as it currently stands is that the Now Playing tab is just a tiny phone-sized thing that refuses to fill the screen of my tablet. I wanna plug that thing into the stereo, play music, and SEE THE ALBUM ART like it’s 1986 and I’ve got the LP jacket sitting in front of the turntable. Also the occasional attempts to upsell me to their streaming service that bring up a blank window that sits there waiting for something to load off the net and can only be dismissed by force quitting Music and hoping it doesn’t decide to do that again when I relaunch it can die in a fire. I don’t curate playlists much and when I do it’s on the computer.
• nytesky 7y ago
  We have used Apple Music for over a year, and it works great for our use case “I want to listen to song by such and such” — with kids you do a lot of repeat plays. Integration with Echo devices was a nice plus, but we had been gifted a Google Home which does not play Apple Music. People rave about Spotify, so we took the plunge. It did link with my Google Home and Echo devices. Everything else was disappointing. The interface was fine, but seemed to not work as well, there were no lyrics and we found many artists just missing. But the worst was Alexa integration, we would ask for some mainstream song and get some random Muzak cover, no matter how carefully we specified the artist and song. And CarPlay integration did not allow access to library or song selection.
  • deerIRL 7y ago
    The Muzak issue is what actually caused me to switch from Spotify to Apple Music. My discovery playlists started replacing mainstream songs with muzak and there was no way at the time to block an artist or specific songs. I can only listen to terrible chiptunes of In the hall of the Mountain King so many times.
• coreai 7y ago
  I have both Spotify and Apple Music but somehow the Spotify interface to me seems just simple enough that I can play what I want and the interface gets out of the way. With Apple it’s almost like they want you to listen to what they want you to listen and not what you want to listen to. This is what basically companies trying to push their content do over what content you prefer and it almost always ends up in bad interfaces.
• q_eng_anon 7y ago
  Apple, Spotify, etc. (or a third-party) need to agree on a standard format for a users music library so that we can switch between UIs more easily - separate the UI from the actual music provider, allow more niche UIs Obviously nobody will do this because their whole game is locking people in - but nothing is stopping Apple/Spotify from exposing a dev interface to Apple Music's UI components that would allow essentially the same thing but only with Apple Music as backend provider
• DHPersonal 7y ago
  An alternative that I found pretty pleasant — but once I got an Apple Music subscription, a bit unnecessary — is an app called Cs Music by Mike Clay. He has a new app in pre-order status called SongOwl that might prove to be better than Cs Music, but I haven’t seen much of it. I bought Cs Music to get a landscape view music player again, but I’ve since just accepted that most people use portrait mode these days.
• HeckFeck 7y ago
  One of the context menus mentioned in the article says: Suggest Less Like This I presume Apple mean "Suggest Fewer Like This"? "Suggest Less Like This" means you have some dissatisfaction in the manner Apple used to suggest these songs.
  • samatman 7y ago
    Frequency isn't countable, so I'd parse that sentence as "Suggest tracks like this less often". "Suggest fewer tracks like this" would also be a valid request, the point is that it's an ellipsis either way, so I don't see a problem. That's before we get into the fact that the 'invalid' "Ten items or less" formulation has been frequent in English for hundreds of years...
  • jdminhbg 7y ago
    Suggest Less Music Like This works just fine.
• mattcantstop 7y ago
  Rdio was amazing. I use Apple Music now (family plan) but I would pay probably $25/month to have Rdio back. Rdio had the best features for following other people who had similar interests to me and seeing what they were currently listening to. It was amazing. And it was an experience using Rdio. I would be in the app during my work day quite a lot seeing what music there was to discover. Music discovery was never better. I want Rdio back!
  • zymhan 7y ago
    It makes me sad that Pandora never expanded the social features within their platform. It has never been easy, or even always possible, to just share a song with another Pandora user.
• sbarre 7y ago
  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. If they opened this up to third-party apps, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
  • lstamour 7y ago
    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.
  • kccqzy 7y ago
    That doesn't sound correct to me. But when I go to privacy settings on my iPhone I see plenty of apps having been authorized by me to access my local music library. For example Google Maps has this permission, so that I can begin playback or change playlists right within a Maps navigation. So at least Apple provides some kind of API to allow third parties to access your music library. I'm not just sure how extensive that API is.
    • sbarre 7y ago
      Thanks for clarifying, I didn't know this.
  • herodotus 7y ago
    No, this is not correct. I sell an App that lets you play music that is stored locally on your phone. Before you rush to get it though: it is restricted to Operas. It also lets you play cloud music in your library if you subscribe to iTunes Match.
• kdot 7y ago
  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.
• pianoben 7y ago
  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.
• morango 7y ago
  I'm just glad the author did try spotify because they're trash too.
• hateful 7y ago
  The severe lack of options for customizing interfaces in any computer system really infuriates me. I understand that too many options can lead to a basic user configuring an application in a way that would cause them to call tech support because it makes the program unusable, but I find most software for day-to-day purposes (playing music being a perfect example) infuriating. Here are some examples: 1. The Pandora app (at least on Android) will pop up the bright white "today" screen about a minute after I get in my car - with no way to disable it. 2. The Youtube music app doesn't play landscape, and if you full screen it it removes all relevant information and just shows a photo. 3. This is a big one: the Android share functionality is terrible. It tries to give you recent suggestions, but they're always not working. I would prefer to choose a list of share targets and have it just show me them. It's almost never relevant. Most of the time the first result is to text a person I've never talked to in years. I feel like this is a case of "If all you have is a hammer" since it's Google and they're using search to show the result instead of just letting you set the list. 4. Every new OS forgets that people may have more than one monitor - it drives me nuts how we can't get Windows to work on Windows in general. Why can't I save the position I want an app to open at? Why can't I see where it's going to open in a properties window and manually set the position? Why can't I choose what will load on the focused monitor vs. the default, vs. a specific place? 5. Dark mode, dark mode, dark mode (this has been way better lately) 6. Music programs (and in-car systems) seem to handle "random" in different ways - and there's no indication of what type it is. In my current car (a Chevy Sonic) I cannot play all albums random - I can play all songs random, but if I turn off random it will just play the songs in random order. I want to have my music on random, and when I turn it off - I want it to play by Artist, Album Year, Track. Songs in alphabetical order is never what's wanted. 7. Android took away the ability to search for apps directly, you have to go to the search page and scroll down and hope "apps" is there. 8. A lot of mobile apps do not allow you to modify the search you've done. You have to start over. And sometimes you start typing the first word and none of the suggestions are that word alone, you can only select a phrase, but if you do, there's no changing it to what you want. You have to manually type. I can think of much more. But this was already a rant that was slightly off topic and not asked for,
• psychomugs 7y ago
  I have (discounted) subscriptions to both Apple Music and Spotify. Apple Music wins for integration with personal libraries; Spotify's approach to local file handling is a kludge and I listen to a lot of music that's not available on either platform. Spotify wins for their recommendation system and continuity; I haven't found AM's recommendations to be as good and it's still boggling how hard Apple pushes Continuity in everything but music.
• cygned 7y ago
  While I can cope with the UI, what really drives me nuts are actual bugs. Sometimes, albums are split into two parts. Sometimes, songs are randomly missing. When downloading music, sometimes it takes forever or just doesn’t download at all. My most favorite one: when I plug the phone into my car, in 1/2 cases it stops playback (even from another app) and starts playing a random song. It’s always the same. And it’s a good song. But it is something different. Imagine you get into your car at 6am listening to a podcast and suddenly Metallica starts screaming at you.
  • deergomoo 7y ago
    > Sometimes, albums are split into two parts. Sometimes, songs are randomly missing. Add “sometimes songs are replaced by versions from compilation albums” which is also incredibly frustrating if you like to curate a library. However, all of these bugs have been present since iTunes Match launched, long before Apple Music was a thing. I have no faith they’ll ever get fixed. My theory is that rights for songs temporarily lapse or transfer, causing the album to be removed and re-added on the back end, and the system to match things back up is wonky. Syncing music to the Apple Watch is also incredibly unreliable. I had to deduce that songs that aren’t downloaded to the phone will never transfer to the Watch (even though the Watch has its own WiFi connection) because the transfer screen just says “syncing...” forever. Apple Music is horrible, but the lack of a real library in Spotify (as mentioned in the article) is just about keeping me subscribed.
  • jakebasile 7y ago
    That album splitting bug has been around for years and I don't know if they'll ever fix it. It's particularly infuriating because when you look at one half the album in your library there's a button to see the whole album in Apple Music's library, and when you click on it it shows that the entire album is downloaded anyways. So the system has the information it needs to group them as one but refuses to do so. I am not sure but I think it's related to another longstanding issue where a particular version of a song is replaced with a different version of a song (usually one from a compilation or best-of album instead of the original single or EP, etc.)
    • 7y ago
• fnord77 7y ago
  apple music has a horrific UI that makes zero sense.
• Invictus0 7y ago
  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.
• jedberg 7y ago
  I've seen a couple of rants about Apple software here on HN the last few days. It's important to remember that Apple has never been very good at software services. Sometimes they make something good, but usually they make "just ok". Because they never had to be good. Their hardware was compelling enough that people just suffered through their software because they had to. But now they're trying to make money from their software services. They're probably fooled into thinking they are doing a good job because their revenue is so high and their customer base is so large, especially compared to their competitors. But I think that's a red herring for them. They are still benefiting from their installed hardware base. I doubt they would have even half the customer base they do if they were just selling software (like say on Windows). If they really want to make software services a key pillar of their business, they need to step up their game. They need to interview customers and listen to their needs. They need to collect analytics on usage and then actually analyze them to improve their products. I think if they would spend a bit more resources on their software, and give their engineers a bit more leeway to experiment and actually talk to customers, they would be far more successful than they already are. I think their culture of secrecy is hurting them in the software space, and always has.
  • pb7 7y ago
    > Their hardware was compelling enough that people just suffered through their software because they had to. I couldn’t disagree more. Apple, from my understanding, is famously successful because they make both great hardware and great software. It’s the combination of both that made their hardware products sell like hot cakes. It’s the reason that year after year people keep complaining about the “Apple tax” on comparably-specced hardware. Customers don’t care because they want Apple software on their machines. Their operating systems are well optimized and user friendly. Their core apps range from decent to really great (presumably because the teams working on them are highly independent). Many of their core apps don’t even need third party replacements because they do everything you’ll ever need them to do. I just don’t see the argument for their software being consistently bad. Are there also bad examples? Yup. But I would pick Apple over Microsoft for consumer software any day of the week despite the former being “a hardware company” and the latter being “a software company”.
• gargs 7y ago
  The one thing I wish they improved was being able to scroll through my playlists using an index on the right (like in the Contacts app). Right now, there are limited sorting options but all of them require considerable scrolling. Also, the cells are huge for some reason.
• ProfessorLayton 7y ago
  The Music.app has been one of my biggest pain points in all of iOS. Apple has always been opinionated about their software designs, but I can’t seem to make sense of the stance taken when they made the music player. Is it music discovery? If so, why is the For You tab 2/3 recently played and favorites?? — I’ve obviously already discovered and liked that music! All the other stuff is below the fold or multiple swipes away. The fact that all the other tabs are lazy-loaded drives me nuts. Just a completely blank page with a spinner, so I cant even scroll down to where I know I want to navigate until it loads (Super fun on the train with cellular dead zones). More fun bugs: - Add next: https://imgur.com/mIOn4I7 https://imgur.com/mIOn4I7 - Literally failing at music playback: https://imgur.com/4jCszaz https://imgur.com/4jCszaz - Broken layout on smaller phones: https://imgur.com/MVTN1nS https://imgur.com/MVTN1nS
• newsoundwave 7y ago
  > which makes me irrationally unhappy I'm somewhat comforted to hear that others have similar reactions to music applications. I rarely ever feel myself getting angry over things, but the one thing that gets me feeling uncomfortably heated is thinking about how much worse music apps and streaming services have gotten over the years. I think I, like many people, have a very emotional connection to music and things that get in the way of that feel like a very personal attack, even though that's not reasonable in any way. At one point, I think I was signed up to every music stream service and had some issue or another with all of them: * Google Play Music - nearly ideal, but incredibly buggy once I switched away from Android to iOS, and the fact that it's in perpetual "dying but not dead" frustrates me. I've also moved almost completely away from Google at this point. * YouTube Music - Takes the worst parts of Spotify and YouTube and puts them together, with no benefit over the app it's replacing. * Spotify - I find the UI infuriating after a year of trying to switch to Spotify. Every time I try to let go of control and listen to my music the Spotify way, I can feel myself getting more and more frustrated. Additionally, I don't think they understand what a queue is, their implementation of a queue never ceases to surprise and frustrate me. Playing everything by a single artist is difficult to do well, without dragging in a lot of crap, and the "This is $ARTIST" playlists are mostly awful, IMO. * Tidal - Lacking many basic features, has the same queuing issues as Spotify. * Deezer - Almost gets queuing correct, but the fact that they always try to add music to your queue when it's empty and the fact that clearing a queue still isn't possible is a non-starter. I know there's a feature to disable auto-play, auto-add music, but on three separate occasions I've tried to turn it off, with support attempting to manually turn it off for me, without it working. * Rdio - Was almost perfect, but is now dead * Amazon Music - In terms of conceptual design, works better than most, but I've mostly gotten off of Amazon's services and their app's performance was abysmal last I tried. * Apple Music - I have many of the same complaints as the author, I just can mostly overlook them as they have a weird queue that I can almost adapt to. It frustrates me once in a while, but it lets me listen to music. Apple Music is currently my daily driver, but I still have several premium streaming accounts as I _want_ to listen to music and will happily pay for them, just unhappy with the offerings atm. I'm not contributing a ton to the conversation this late into discussion, just sympathizing with the author that, at least with streaming services, I can very much empathize with someone who can't find a good solution to just play music.
• navels 7y ago
  Another reason I've stayed with Spotify: scrobbling. AFAIK Apple Music clients don't have native support for last.fm scrobbling and the third-party solutions I've read have big flaws. OTOH the lack of a streaming Apple Watch Spotify client is keeping me from getting an Apple Watch :-|
• samatman 7y ago
  This article prompted me to clean up my playlists, which have been 'append only' for quite a few years, and wow. What a disaster. First: swipe-from-right doesn't reveal a red delete button, like you'd expect. So I hit the search engine, discover you have to long-press to delete. Annoying, but okay, progress. Now, there are some albums on my Playlist page. Which is weird, and I don't remember putting them there. But when I long-press those albums, it gives me "Add to a Playlist..", which is... weird, can you add a playlist to a playlist? Anyway, there's a "Remove.." as well, let's try that. The option screen lets me Remove Downloads or Delete from Library. I try Remove Downloads, since this is an album I put in iTunes myself and I don't want to lose it. This... removes the album from my phone. And keeps the Playlist. There seems to be no way to remove the playlist, and keep the album. That is, of course, what I want to do. It's an album! It doesn't need to be a playlist!! When I want it, I go to Artists or Albums!!! This is madness. Does anyone at Apple actually use their own software?
  • pwinnski 7y ago
    Yes, you can add a playlist to a playlist. I do it frequently. If you are playing an album and choose to save to a playlist, it gives that playlist the same name (and art) as the album. What else would it do? Deleting the playlist does not delete the album, why would it? I can definitely see your confusion, and I'm sure it could be better-designed. That said, I never have any issues, and playlists are my primary use case for Apple Music.
    • samatman 7y ago
      Remove the Downloads removes the corresponding album, so I'm not inclined to find out if Delete from Library does the same thing. Why wouldn't they call it "Delete Playlist"? And why does Remove the Downloads remove the underlying album, instead of the correct behavior, which is to remove the playlist from my phone but keep it in the cloud and my other devices? This is bad no matter how you gloss it.
      • samatman 7y ago
        If I click Remove the Downloads on a playlist that isn't based on an album, is it going to remove those individual tracks from my phone? When would that ever be the behavior that someone wants? Actions on a playlist should be limited to that playlist, this is UX 101 stuff.
• luckycharms810 7y ago
  This article really struck a nerve with me. I've been going around trying to explain to people that the experience of listening to music has got progressively worse over the last 20 years. * Discovery is back to being passive - recommendations come from the company that you are subscribed to. * Quality is paid for separately - the subscription has a fee, your data has a separate fee. * Quality is not guaranteed - it depends on your current internet connection. * There are dead zones. * Most apps I've used do a terrible job showing you only the downloaded music you have. * Your available music is subject to the deals between record labels and subscription services. * Subscription services aren't incentivized to house more obscure / old / rare / hard to find music. * Music is siloed in to different subscription services. ( We are moving to a Showtime vs Starz vs HBO vs Netflix model ) What really gets me is that at the end of the day - going the legal route of a subscription service is truly only marginally better for artists.
• m0zg 7y ago
  It's busted so thoroughly I switched to Google Music instead, in spite of its cringeworthy and inconsistent UI. One thing that's particularly bad is search. It's not even difficult to do it well in this space, but for as long as lemmings keep paying, there's no incentive for Apple to give a shit. They unconditionally give a shit about hardware as a company. Software is like "meh, it looks pretty but other than that we don't have to care". Hairforce One needs to do his job. At the kooky prices you're charging you should be sweating every single detail throughout the entire stack, silicon to pixels.
• joshschreuder 7y ago
  I recommend trying some alternative apps. I'm currently using Marvis which I really like, but there's also Cs (formerly Cesium), Miximum and Soor which differ quite a bit but are all much nicer than the default Music.app
• woofwoofwoof 7y ago
  My problems with IOS music app are 1) full-text search is bad - often can't find what exists 2) it is slow - For You tabs take forever to load even on fast WIFI/LTE connections 3) navigation is not convenient - I like playlists and it takes a few taps to reach them.
• astannard 7y ago
  Personally I have moved away from Apple for music. I found the apps on both Mac and mobile get worse and worse. Things that were easy such as using AirTunes got much harder to use. I uploaded my music collection to google and use a combination of that and Amazon music. I find myself wanting to create a playlist for my Apple watch for jogging and putting it off as I dont want to deal with iTunes.
• machinecoffee 7y ago
  I'm struggling to see how to add songs to a playlist for my iPod - ok its old (2007 ipod nano), but I love it, so I guess I'll struggle on. Saying that, lots of people complained about iTunes, especially that it tried do do too much. Now it does less, and should be more focused on music but I find myself being constantly frustrated with it too.