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New Musik App abolutely horrible

Jmausmuc

Jmausmuc

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 13, 2014
877
1,847
Apple Music navigation and user interface is just horrible. One of the most complicated apps I have ever used and definitely by far the most complicated by apple. Unbelievable. Don’t think my parents are gonna be able to use this, they get around spotify just fine.

What is going on?
 
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Interesting, I'm looking forward to playing around in it some more myself and interested to hear others opinions here as well. On both my iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2 I merely popped open the app and hopped thru a couple pages/tabs/whatever and thought I liked the looks of it all, especially compared to the old stock music app.

I'm also teetering with actually starting my free trial period for Apple Music as well. I'm in the nearly extinct class of people that still have completely avoided music streaming and I've hung on to my iPod Classic as my primary source. Apple Music may just be the service to potentially ease me into it, but we shall see...
 
The interface is okay, but I noticed when I sort by album, the albums aren't in alphabetical order, it's the artist that is in alphabetical order, but shows their album.
As someone who has many compilation albums, this is a huge mess.
 
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When you select a band, do you have to scroll through a list of all songs (like in the iOS 7 app) or can you pick an album first (like in iOS 1-6)?
 
me7 said:
When you select a band, do you have to scroll through a list of all songs (like in the iOS 7 app) or can you pick an album first (like in iOS 1-6)?
Click to expand...

Album first, which is a great improvement actually!

Saying that, I hate that when I accidentally hit the artist picture and not just the name, it changes from what's currently playing. :(
 
Chabba said:
The interface is okay, but I noticed when I sort by album, the albums aren't in alphabetical order, it's the artist that is in alphabetical order, but shows their album.
As someone who has many compilation albums, this is a huge mess.
Click to expand...

I found an option under setting -> music-> sort album by title!
Might solve your problem!
 
Quite complicated compared to Spotify. The interface looks pretty nice and stuff is neatly arranged, but it's so complex. I don't know why they keep going with that jarring magenta/white theme though.

For music discovery, it doesn't hold a candle against Spotify. With Spotify I can listen to an artist, go to related artists, just tap and hold a related artist and quickly preview their catalog. When I let go with my finger I'm back to where I was. Apple Music feels like it's useful if you already know what you're looking for. The "for you" tab also seems pretty static as if it's basing my taste on the top 3 artists within the genre, whereas Spotify gives me new and widely varying content every day, and as soon as I listen through one suggestion.

And on a final usability note, Spotify can control my phone from my Mac or vice versa. Insanely useful feature, and no separate remote apps or setups needed. It's just there.

I don't see the appeal, I'm afraid. Having a large catalog is just not enough, and Spotify knows that.
 
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I spent my first evening yesterday trying to figure out how to use Apple Music and gave up without playing one track I liked. I only recognized two artists in the field of bubbles where I was asked to select three. Hopefully today will be a better day, but I remember how delighted I was my first five minutes with Songza.
 
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I agree, it's truly awful. No large album art view, popup menus with a dozen confusing items ("Add to Up Next", etc), tiny elipses everywhere "...", prices featured front and center...

The whole thing is obviously designed to push the subscription, and purchases. I actually thought Google Play Music was the worst music player on the market, but this half-baked mess takes the prize. It makes Google Play look downright elegant.
 
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Easttime said:
I spent my first evening yesterday trying to figure out how to use Apple Music and gave up without playing one track I liked. I only recognized two artists in the field of bubbles where I was asked to select three. Hopefully today will be a better day, but I remember how delighted I was my first five minutes with Songza.
Click to expand...
Update: well this morning my second attempt at Apple Music is much brighter. Took some time, but I found places where I will be comfortable. I think I'm going to like this, the way I took to the new Photos App and iCloud Photo Library.
 
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I think it's a bit weird, but probably just needs getting used to. I hope they make some improvements over time.

One thing it has over Spotify is a proper Artists > Albums breakdown - finally! Before Spotify had a 'Your Music' type section you had to manually create playlists groups for artists and playlists for albums. Then their 'Your Music' made it a bit easier to add albums and artists, but when you went into an artist it just listed all their songs without indiviuating albums. Same mistake Music on iOS 7 onwards made- until now. Finally it's easy to add an album to your music and then be able to drill down from artist to album. Yay.

Even though the search icon is on every page at the top, I feel like this doesn't give enough focus to the most powerful new feature of Music, the ability to search for music you don't have and listen immediately. It feels like this powerful new feature is subordinate to customised playlists (For You), Radio and Connect, which all get focussed tabs on the bottom. I don't really care about these features.

My Music should be the first tab, it should have a search bar at the top when you scroll up, and it should let you search Apple Music there too.

I wish you could hide recently added, or make it its own tab. I want a tab which is just a list of my music sorted how I like. Not one that starts two fifths down the screen

They should indicate in the list which artists/albums/songs you have available offline (like spotify). The only way to tell is to see whether the "..." options include 'Make Available Offline' or 'Remove Downloads'.

Just a few thoughts for now...
 
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Its because theyre trying to make one UI that is the same across all devices. It doesn't work. They should design for the device and to its limitations, right up to the knuckle but its easier to design one UI and just scale it to all devices.
 
Pagemakers said:
I think Apple Music is a bit of a mess too. The bubbles are absolutely terrible.
Click to expand...

yea bubbles are a joke. Usability pushed aside for look this is cool we can make bubbles dance around the screen. Lists work fine for me.
 
GreyOS said:
They should indicate in the list which artists/albums/songs you have available offline (like spotify). The only way to tell is to see whether the "..." options include 'Make Available Offline' or 'Remove Downloads'.
Click to expand...
Yes! This is my main concern right now. I listen to music a lot offline and I have not worked out whether my music will be available offline. I don't want to rack up cellular bills inadvertently.
 
It's a disaster.

The UI is the worst I've seen - too cluttered, too messy, everything is in the wrong place. The sync with Apple Music on iTunes doesn't work properly. And the overall app lacks the personality that has, for example, Spotify.
 
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Easttime said:
Yes! This is my main concern right now. I listen to music a lot offline and I have not worked out whether my music will be available offline. I don't want to rack up cellular bills inadvertently.
Click to expand...
Your music is available offline but you have to click "make available offline" on the artist, album or genre
 
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In iTunes is just mixes your purchases and Apple Music songs and when you for example ass an album to your library and you have previously purchased a song from that album, it will be duplicate. You than have to go to the content menu select information and go to the last tab to find out which one is purchased and which is from Apple music to delete the right one.

I can’t believe how this happened. Yes, the design itself is pretty good but the usability is so bad I almost can’t believe this is an apple app.
 
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Easttime said:
Yes! This is my main concern right now. I listen to music a lot offline and I have not worked out whether my music will be available offline. I don't want to rack up cellular bills inadvertently.
Click to expand...
It appears that for songs which are actually on your phone, there is a very tiny iPhone icon at the top right of each song in the list when in views other than "Songs" such as Album or Artist.
I agree that the interface in the Music app is a train wreck. It's trying to do far too many things on screen, and it's too difficult to find things in the app.
Edit: It also appears that once you've downloaded songs to your phone, you must delete them individually, rather than by artist or album, at least if you want to keep them in the cloud. (Referring here to what was iTunes Match/is now iCloud Music Library.)
 
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chrfr said:
Edit: It also appears that once you've downloaded songs to your phone, you must delete them individually, rather than by artist or album, at least if you want to keep them in the cloud. (Referring here to what was iTunes Match/is now iCloud Music Library.)
Click to expand...

You can delete whole albums from settings/general/usage/manage storage/music

and seems you can also do it from touching the 3 little dots in the album you want to delete. At the top right next to the share icon. It says remove from my Music. Does that do what you want?

or you can touch the 3 dots next to the album title in my music view.
 
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