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New Musik App abolutely horrible

i cant see anyone in my family understanding the interface to be honest lol even i dont understand it really. i dont even see a way to add songs from apple music directly to a playlist. do i really have to add them to my music first and again from there onto a playlist? and OMG the "New" tab is a mess and has almost nothing to do with new. yes lets just throw everything that fits nowhere else in there.

back to Spotify soon i guess
 
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The UI for those who don't want/use Apple Music or Radio is poor, not because it's new but because it compromises ease of use.

(1) Now that we can't edit the bottom "tray" (for lack of a better phrase) I have to use the pull-down to select between Artists, Albums, Songs, Genre, etc. These used to be at the bottom for easy access ... now these are in a pull-down, but what makes that worse is that I have to scroll all the way to the top just to see the pull-down (assuming that my last selection was not at the top).

(2) The "Recently Added" feature is OK, but it takes up way too much valuable space, and could have been a button (equivalent to "Playlists"). Again, these buttons' location/presence should be user-defined, as was available in 8.3 and earlier.

(3) Access to Now Playing is a skinny little ribbon at the bottom of the screen, not so easy to tap accurately under some circumstances.

(4) When in a playlist of mixed artists, sometimes I'll want to play the complete album of the song that's playing. I used to be able to flip Now Playing over to see the album's entire track list to choose from, and playback would stay within that album if I selected a different track within that album. There is no equivalent for this in iOS 8.4, so now I'd have to navigate to the album via the silly pull-down at the top (see #1).

Not correct --> (5) Lyrics appear to be gone entirely, that was a nice feature.

(6) No indication of "Track x of y" ... sometimes nice to know how far into an album or playlist you are. The new "Up Next" feature helps, but isn't really the same experience (though I do like this).

(7) Smart Playlists still won't Live Update if you use the "Playlist Is ... " criteria. I've given up on this capability ever being restored in iOS, even though it works on an iPod Classic.

I've submitted feedback to Apple on each of these issues, but skeptical they'll be addressed.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

re: #5 -- After a reset, lyrics started showing up by tapping Now Playing artwork.
 
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Think the UI will improve greatly over time, that being said as a Spotify Premium member (reduced price in my Vodafone UK contract) I don't think its overly complicated but could do with some polishing to bring it up to the apple standard.
 
Since every iPhone/8.4 question I'm already being asked from friends and family who upgraded is "how do I...?" & Music related, I can comfortably say this new interface is NOT intuitive. And no, it's not bad just because it's new, it's bad because it's poorly designed from a usability perpective, and it's cluttered as hell from a design perspective. I honestly didn't believe they could make it both uglier and less useful than the previous version, but they managed both. Wow.

I used it to download my iTunes Match music to my phone & then tossed it into my "Totally Useless" folder where most of the other Apple apps reside--that folder gets bigger with every iOS update, but I never thought Music would end up in it. I usually fix whatever design crap Apple's done to the Music app via jailbreak tweaks, but this steaming pile isn't likely to be fixable. It needs a full overhaul, starting with splitting Apple Music into its own downloadable-if-you-actually-want-it app. I'll use Cesium for now instead, and keep an eye on other third party music apps instead.

Funny, I just tried Spotify for the first time last week. And while that too could use a bit cleaner design, unlike Apple's new Music app, I didn't have to look anything up to figure out how it works. If I were interested in dropping $120 a year on subscription fees, I know which one I'd pick as of right now...
 
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Does anyone know how to get a shuffle of all songs by one artist? I want to select my favorite artist and then hear all of their songs shuffled. Right now it seems like all I can do is select any one particular album and hear all of the songs on that album. These are songs that are actually on my device too.
 
Cmd-Z said:
(4) When in a playlist of mixed artists, sometimes I'll want to play the complete album of the song that's playing. I used to be able to flip Now Playing over to see the album's entire track list to choose from, and playback would stay within that album if I selected a different track within that album. There is no equivalent for this in iOS 8.4, so now I'd have to navigate to the album via the silly pull-down at the top (see #1).
Click to expand...

Tap the 3 dots at the bottom of the screen and a menu will appear. Then, tap the album name at the top of that menu and it will take you to the entire album. I was doing this last night before I reverted back to 8.3.
 
psywzrd said:
Does anyone know how to get a shuffle of all songs by one artist? I want to select my favorite artist and then hear all of their songs shuffled. Right now it seems like all I can do is select any one particular album and hear all of the songs on that album. These are songs that are actually on my device too.
Click to expand...

Tap the artist's photo (not the artist's name) and it will begin playing all songs by that artist. Then just use the shuffle button to shuffle them.
 
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Jayson A said:
Tap the 3 dots at the bottom of the screen and a menu will appear. Then, tap the album name at the top of that menu and it will take you to the entire album. I was doing this last night before I reverted back to 8.3.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the tip! Yet another workaround for what used to be easy ...
 
I have very mixed feelings about the new music app, but they're all negative when it comes to this overpopulated list:

IMG_1163.PNG
 
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Cmd-Z said:
The UI for those who don't want/use Apple Music or Radio is poor, not because it's new but because it compromises ease of use.

(1) Now that we can't edit the bottom "tray" (for lack of a better phrase) I have to use the pull-down to select between Artists, Albums, Songs, Genre, etc. These used to be at the bottom for easy access ... now these are in a pull-down, but what makes that worse is that I have to scroll all the way to the top just to see the pull-down (assuming that my last selection was not at the top).

(2) The "Recently Added" feature is OK, but it takes up way too much valuable space, and could have been a button (equivalent to "Playlists"). Again, these buttons' location/presence should be user-defined, as was available in 8.3 and earlier.

(3) Access to Now Playing is a skinny little ribbon at the bottom of the screen, not so easy to tap accurately under some circumstances.

(4) When in a playlist of mixed artists, sometimes I'll want to play the complete album of the song that's playing. I used to be able to flip Now Playing over to see the album's entire track list to choose from, and playback would stay within that album if I selected a different track within that album. There is no equivalent for this in iOS 8.4, so now I'd have to navigate to the album via the silly pull-down at the top (see #1).

(5) Lyrics appear to be gone entirely, that was a nice feature.

(6) No indication of "Track x of y" ... sometimes nice to know how far into an album or playlist you are. The new "Up Next" feature helps, but isn't really the same experience (though I do like this).

(7) Smart Playlists still won't Live Update if you use the "Playlist Is ... " criteria. I've given up on this capability ever being restored in iOS, even though it works on an iPod Classic.

I've submitted feedback to Apple on each of these issues, but skeptical they'll be addressed.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
Click to expand...

I'm not gonna answer these all point by point, but it's clear that a lot of the (minority group of) people who don't like AM have reached that conclusion because they expect it to work the way their previous music app works. It's a new app with TONS of AWESOME functionality, which works really well precisely because it *doesn't* operate the same way that other music apps work.

For example, your complaint about not being able to go from a currently playing song right to that album is simply false. You can do it very easily, you just didn't give it a fair chance to figure out how to do it, you just tried to do it the old way and and assumed that function didn't exist simply because it wasn't in the old place it used to be.

To do it from the currently playing song, simply press the "..." more options button, then tap the name or thumbnail of the album. Boom. 2 taps.
 
Yea the old one wasn’t very good but that doesn’t change the fact, that the new one also sucks.

Come on. I mean the design itself isn’t to bad but it is so complicated to use. So many tabs and submemues. All music crammed into one tab with weird selection menu.

I mean if your are a techie, sure you can get into it, but this is nothing like the simplicity Apple has always embraced and bears no resemblance to the ease of use of the earlier iOS days.
It looks like something Microsoft would have developed a couple of years ago. So many tabs, so many menus.
 
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Cmd-Z said:
The UI for those who don't want/use Apple Music or Radio is poor, not because it's new but because it compromises ease of use.

(1) Now that we can't edit the bottom "tray" (for lack of a better phrase) I have to use the pull-down to select between Artists, Albums, Songs, Genre, etc. These used to be at the bottom for easy access ... now these are in a pull-down, but what makes that worse is that I have to scroll all the way to the top just to see the pull-down (assuming that my last selection was not at the top).

(2) The "Recently Added" feature is OK, but it takes up way too much valuable space, and could have been a button (equivalent to "Playlists"). Again, these buttons' location/presence should be user-defined, as was available in 8.3 and earlier.

(3) Access to Now Playing is a skinny little ribbon at the bottom of the screen, not so easy to tap accurately under some circumstances.

(4) When in a playlist of mixed artists, sometimes I'll want to play the complete album of the song that's playing. I used to be able to flip Now Playing over to see the album's entire track list to choose from, and playback would stay within that album if I selected a different track within that album. There is no equivalent for this in iOS 8.4, so now I'd have to navigate to the album via the silly pull-down at the top (see #1).

(5) Lyrics appear to be gone entirely, that was a nice feature.

(6) No indication of "Track x of y" ... sometimes nice to know how far into an album or playlist you are. The new "Up Next" feature helps, but isn't really the same experience (though I do like this).

(7) Smart Playlists still won't Live Update if you use the "Playlist Is ... " criteria. I've given up on this capability ever being restored in iOS, even though it works on an iPod Classic.

I've submitted feedback to Apple on each of these issues, but skeptical they'll be addressed.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
Click to expand...

Strongly agree with most of this.
 
Jmausmuc said:
...it is so complicated to use. So many tabs and submemues. All music crammed into one tab with weird selection menu.

[...] this is nothing like the simplicity Apple has always embraced [...]

It looks like something Microsoft would have developed a couple of years ago. So many tabs, so many menus.
Click to expand...

Well unfortunately they have a CEO who has NO understanding of all of the things that made Apple great and stand out in terms of UI and usability - he's an office guy - he worked at IBM and HP before he came to Apple.

Every new software they have released in the last couple of years proves that they can not do it without Steve Jobs.

They need a NEW guy in the highest position at Apple who says NOOOOOO to these horrible horrible usability failures they put out nowadays. But Cook doesn't even see that...he doesn't know that this is ****, so he doesn't say no to the release.

Microsoft software and apps seem more Apple like than actual Apple software these days.


Sad.
 
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How can I get rid of the "recently added" section on the top when viewing my music under the "Albums" view? There is an easy toggle for this on iTunes in OSX.

Also, what happened to all of my stations from iTunes Radio? Is the only way to get to them under "recently played" in the Radio section? I have not had time to read about the new music app.
 
myrtlebee said:
How can I get rid of the "recently added" section on the top when viewing my music under the "Albums" view? There is an easy toggle for this on iTunes in OSX.
Click to expand...

Doesn't appear to be removable. No one had found such when I hunted around online earlier today, and the PDF of instuctions linked a few posts up doesn't include a way to make that "feature" go away.
 
The interface is nice but overly complicated and not easy to understand or navigate. I'm using it but it is pretty much a cluster.
 
X--X said:
Well unfortunately they have a CEO who has NO understanding of all of the things that made Apple great and stand out in terms of UI and usability - he's an office guy - he worked at IBM and HP before he came to Apple.

Every new software they have released in the last couple of years proves that they can not do it without Steve Jobs.

They need a NEW guy in the highest position at Apple who says NOOOOOO to these horrible horrible usability failures they put out nowadays. But Cook doesn't even see that...he doesn't know that this is ****, so he doesn't say no to the release.

Microsoft software and apps seem more Apple like than actual Apple software these days.


Sad.
Click to expand...

Agreed 100%. Apple is no longer just easy to use. Just think about the convoluted photos situation. Holy crap that is the worst execution of cloud services ever. I refuse to use it. And I use everything Apple. This music app is looking to be similar. It's definitely a different Apple.
 
One thing I really like so far about Apple Music is the emphasis on playlists. My "For You" tab has been pretty good so far and I've built a few of my own playlists. As I "heart" songs, albums, and playlists, my "For You" tab improves with better playlists, and I'm able to share those playlists with family and friends.

I've got a Five Finger Death Punch playlist for the gym and shared it to my little brother who is a couple of states away from me. He seemed thrilled by the playlist and was able to save it to his phone.

Since the music app is natively built into the iPhone, it's not like I have to convince people to download an extra app.

I'm impressed so far but I do believe it could be more fluid and less cluttered.

Side note: If you opened the music app for the first time and saw all your music gone, like my wife did, chances are its because the Show Available Music Offline is default to On. Once she turned that off, she saw all of her music again.
 
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Why do software developers feel they need to fix things that aren't broken, especially Apple. I hate the new player in IOS 8.4. Gone is the ability to shuffle an artist and playlist. I own all the music I want to play. I have no desire to subscribe to any music service, therefore I have no need for the features that drive that type of listening. Instead of adding this for the streaming listeners, they removed all the features that I loved about the Apple music player. I have taken out of my dock and replaced it with ecoute for now. If there is a better player, I am open to suggestions, but Apple's player sucks!
 
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X--X said:
Well unfortunately they have a CEO who has NO understanding of all of the things that made Apple great and stand out in terms of UI and usability - he's an office guy - he worked at IBM and HP before he came to Apple.

Every new software they have released in the last couple of years proves that they can not do it without Steve Jobs.

They need a NEW guy in the highest position at Apple who says NOOOOOO to these horrible horrible usability failures they put out nowadays. But Cook doesn't even see that...he doesn't know that this is ****, so he doesn't say no to the release.

Microsoft software and apps seem more Apple like than actual Apple software these days.


Sad.
Click to expand...
RIP STEVE JOBS
 
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