6 ms·

UI/UX? YT is the most hated UX of anything I ever use. It’s different in terrible ways on each platform, too.

by e40 2y ago

EduardoBautista 2y ago
On desktop I use YouTube music because of how bad the Apple Music app is. On mobile, I use Apple Music.
- 23B1 2y ago
  What about the app don't you like? I ask because I'm done with Spotify and looking for the next service.
  - nothercastle 2y ago
    Apple Music has a really bizarre interface for managing playlists. It’s so cumbersome and takes way too many clicks. Probably as a side effect of being mobile first
    - nunez 2y ago
      Can you describe how? I actually find playlist editing to be really easy on Apple Music/iTunes.
    - 23B1 2y ago
      Wow I just tried it out and it's quite awful, you're right. The way Spotify allows you to see what's in the 'radio' station and then add additional tracks to a playlist is great – there's almost no similar functionality in Apple music. Actually bonkers that discovery is this bad in Apple music
- eek2121 2y ago
  The desktop app is the same as the mobile one, what issue are you seeing?
- shepherdjerred 2y ago
  You might like https://cider.sh/ https://cider.sh/
llm_nerd 2y ago
YouTube music on iOS and Android is very similar to the other music apps. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-music/id1017492454 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-music/id1017492454 with a 4.8 on iOS, so people seem to like it. https://music.youtube.com/ https://music.youtube.com/ is similar to the web apps. If you're using the video YouTube for music, you're not on the right app. I have both Apple Music (via One Premium) and YouTube Music via YT Premium, and I lean on YT Music overwhelmingly. Its algorithmic playlists are just a universe better.
- whycome 2y ago
  Similar but not great. That last 10% is 90% of the experience.
- vorpalhex 2y ago
  Last I tried it, you couldn't even click through different songs in an album without it jumping to the now playing screen. No way to disable that behavior in settings. Absolute trash of a UI. Spotify has plenty of warts but it is at least functional. On top of that, account management, setup, building new playlists is just horrible. It feels like the person who wrote it doesn't listen to music. Literally anything is better than Youtube music. Given that Google music was actually pretty good back in the day it is hilarious how badly Google has screwed it up.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    I guess people have different needs out of their apps. I was a long time Spotify user. When they decided to give hundreds of millions to Joe Rogan, I switched to Apple Music. Then when I got YT Premium for the video benefits, I randomly tried YT Music and it has been my primary since. And I have zero complaints. I search for artists and albums and songs and play them. Often I start algorithmic "radio" playlists based upon one of those. It plays the music. I save things to my library. I add things to playlists. I listen to music and I think it's a great app. And again, 4.8 on the app store, so the people for whom it's a terrible app might be the exception.
    - 2y ago
skrebbel 2y ago
I switched from Spotify from YT Music solely for UX reasons. Spotify is a weird flimsy thing to me (or at least was, back when I rage-quit it). Things like, their Android app didn't even have a "play album" button. Random simple stuff just was made needlessly hard. Queueing was weird, it seemed to nudge you to shuffling / algorithmic playback, they had this weird podcast thing going on that was just in the way, and so on. YT Music on the other hand, has excellent UX in my opinion. This surprised me, given Google's generally mediocre UX design, but they really got a bunch of competent people on this one. All the basics work the way you'd expect (and that's not trivial to get right). Play, queue, play next. Play album, shuffle, it all just generally does what I expect it to do and I can mostly find the buttons I want easily. You can turn off autoplay. Gapless album playback is on by default. It.. just works! Also I find the algorithmic autoplay to be pretty great, found some great new artists that way. The fact that the catalog is bigger because it includes weird bootleg recordings and live sets and anything music-y ever uploaded to YouTube, is a nice bonus. But for me, the UX sells it.
- Mindwipe 2y ago
  The YouTube Music UI fails at very basic things. Play a track that Google seems is "for children" and you are unable to navigate to another track or browse without it stopping playing, because the service inherited YT's clumsy COPPA compliance solution. The UI can't cope with long titles. It uses space badly. It doesn't surface content well (no Christmas playlist on the front page during December). It's a UI mess. I tried switching my family to it since we pay for YT Premium anyway and faced a total revolt.
- nunez 2y ago
  I found Spotify to be very playlist-oriented. Not great for people who listen to albums straight through. Things like pushing albums to a queue were not possible on the platform (IIRC the best you could do is play albums "next").
  - prpl 2y ago
    you can add albums to the queue. Have been able to for a long time.
soulofmischief 2y ago
If the Spotify UI was the only way I could consume music, I would never listen to another song again. It's ugly, barely customizable, wastes space, wastes time, and it's flat-out user hostile, just like recent YouTube UI changes. Except unlike YouTube, I cannot reasonably modify the style and functionality to my liking, or easily use third-party clients. It seems to me the most ethical mode of consumption which doesn't compromise consumer integrity and freedom is to use YouTube, or pirate, and to make up for lost royalties by directly supporting creators and encouraging creators to cut out the middlemen.
jMyles 2y ago
Vanilla VLC still feels like the best user experience to me.
- CasperH2O 2y ago
  Im still on Winamp, still got the keyboard keys in my muscle memory.
- rpdillon 2y ago
  Agreed! Still my go-to across desktop and mobile.
shepherdjerred 2y ago
Spotify has such a terrible app, at least on iOS. If you download a song and have a weak cellular/WiFi connection the app prefers the connection over the downloaded song, so you just can't listen to music unless you turn on offline mode. Similarly, if you have a weak connection and go back a song that song isn't cached which is infuriating. This mostly happened when I was getting into my car which is barely in WiFi range but the connection wasn't stable enough to be usable, so I'd have to start driving before I could interact with Spotify. Anyway, I switched to Apple Music a year or two ago. Spotify is trying to lock users in with the social aspect (e.g. Spotify Wrapped) but it's just not worth it.
- oarfish 2y ago
  Man, there's few things as infuriating as the Spotify app refusing to play a downloaded podcast unless i connect to the internet. can disconnect right after it starts playing, so it makes no sense.
jimmaswell 2y ago
I've been on a streak of days-long roadtrips using YouTube in my car for about a year and the experience has been great for me on the whole.

UI/UX? YT is the most hated UX of anything I ever use. It’s different in terrible ways on each platform, too.

by e40 2y ago

UI/UX? YT is the most hated UX of anything I ever use. It’s different in terrible ways on each platform, too.

EduardoBautista 2y ago

On desktop I use YouTube music because of how bad the Apple Music app is. On mobile, I use Apple Music.

23B1 2y ago
What about the app don't you like? I ask because I'm done with Spotify and looking for the next service.
- nothercastle 2y ago
  Apple Music has a really bizarre interface for managing playlists. It’s so cumbersome and takes way too many clicks. Probably as a side effect of being mobile first
  - nunez 2y ago
    Can you describe how? I actually find playlist editing to be really easy on Apple Music/iTunes.
  - 23B1 2y ago
    Wow I just tried it out and it's quite awful, you're right. The way Spotify allows you to see what's in the 'radio' station and then add additional tracks to a playlist is great – there's almost no similar functionality in Apple music. Actually bonkers that discovery is this bad in Apple music
eek2121 2y ago
The desktop app is the same as the mobile one, what issue are you seeing?
shepherdjerred 2y ago
You might like https://cider.sh/ https://cider.sh/

llm_nerd 2y ago

YouTube music on iOS and Android is very similar to the other music apps. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-music/id1017492454 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-music/id1017492454 with a 4.8 on iOS, so people seem to like it. https://music.youtube.com/ https://music.youtube.com/ is similar to the web apps. If you're using the video YouTube for music, you're not on the right app. I have both Apple Music (via One Premium) and YouTube Music via YT Premium, and I lean on YT Music overwhelmingly. Its algorithmic playlists are just a universe better.

whycome 2y ago
Similar but not great. That last 10% is 90% of the experience.
vorpalhex 2y ago
Last I tried it, you couldn't even click through different songs in an album without it jumping to the now playing screen. No way to disable that behavior in settings. Absolute trash of a UI. Spotify has plenty of warts but it is at least functional. On top of that, account management, setup, building new playlists is just horrible. It feels like the person who wrote it doesn't listen to music. Literally anything is better than Youtube music. Given that Google music was actually pretty good back in the day it is hilarious how badly Google has screwed it up.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  I guess people have different needs out of their apps. I was a long time Spotify user. When they decided to give hundreds of millions to Joe Rogan, I switched to Apple Music. Then when I got YT Premium for the video benefits, I randomly tried YT Music and it has been my primary since. And I have zero complaints. I search for artists and albums and songs and play them. Often I start algorithmic "radio" playlists based upon one of those. It plays the music. I save things to my library. I add things to playlists. I listen to music and I think it's a great app. And again, 4.8 on the app store, so the people for whom it's a terrible app might be the exception.
  - 2y ago

skrebbel 2y ago

I switched from Spotify from YT Music solely for UX reasons. Spotify is a weird flimsy thing to me (or at least was, back when I rage-quit it). Things like, their Android app didn't even have a "play album" button. Random simple stuff just was made needlessly hard. Queueing was weird, it seemed to nudge you to shuffling / algorithmic playback, they had this weird podcast thing going on that was just in the way, and so on. YT Music on the other hand, has excellent UX in my opinion. This surprised me, given Google's generally mediocre UX design, but they really got a bunch of competent people on this one. All the basics work the way you'd expect (and that's not trivial to get right). Play, queue, play next. Play album, shuffle, it all just generally does what I expect it to do and I can mostly find the buttons I want easily. You can turn off autoplay. Gapless album playback is on by default. It.. just works! Also I find the algorithmic autoplay to be pretty great, found some great new artists that way. The fact that the catalog is bigger because it includes weird bootleg recordings and live sets and anything music-y ever uploaded to YouTube, is a nice bonus. But for me, the UX sells it.

Mindwipe 2y ago
The YouTube Music UI fails at very basic things. Play a track that Google seems is "for children" and you are unable to navigate to another track or browse without it stopping playing, because the service inherited YT's clumsy COPPA compliance solution. The UI can't cope with long titles. It uses space badly. It doesn't surface content well (no Christmas playlist on the front page during December). It's a UI mess. I tried switching my family to it since we pay for YT Premium anyway and faced a total revolt.
nunez 2y ago
I found Spotify to be very playlist-oriented. Not great for people who listen to albums straight through. Things like pushing albums to a queue were not possible on the platform (IIRC the best you could do is play albums "next").
- prpl 2y ago
  you can add albums to the queue. Have been able to for a long time.

soulofmischief 2y ago

If the Spotify UI was the only way I could consume music, I would never listen to another song again. It's ugly, barely customizable, wastes space, wastes time, and it's flat-out user hostile, just like recent YouTube UI changes. Except unlike YouTube, I cannot reasonably modify the style and functionality to my liking, or easily use third-party clients. It seems to me the most ethical mode of consumption which doesn't compromise consumer integrity and freedom is to use YouTube, or pirate, and to make up for lost royalties by directly supporting creators and encouraging creators to cut out the middlemen.

jMyles 2y ago

Vanilla VLC still feels like the best user experience to me.

CasperH2O 2y ago
Im still on Winamp, still got the keyboard keys in my muscle memory.
rpdillon 2y ago
Agreed! Still my go-to across desktop and mobile.

shepherdjerred 2y ago

Spotify has such a terrible app, at least on iOS. If you download a song and have a weak cellular/WiFi connection the app prefers the connection over the downloaded song, so you just can't listen to music unless you turn on offline mode. Similarly, if you have a weak connection and go back a song that song isn't cached which is infuriating. This mostly happened when I was getting into my car which is barely in WiFi range but the connection wasn't stable enough to be usable, so I'd have to start driving before I could interact with Spotify. Anyway, I switched to Apple Music a year or two ago. Spotify is trying to lock users in with the social aspect (e.g. Spotify Wrapped) but it's just not worth it.

oarfish 2y ago
Man, there's few things as infuriating as the Spotify app refusing to play a downloaded podcast unless i connect to the internet. can disconnect right after it starts playing, so it makes no sense.

jimmaswell 2y ago

I've been on a streak of days-long roadtrips using YouTube in my car for about a year and the experience has been great for me on the whole.