[gabagool]

Maybe this is my fault for not moving to Apple Music, but the iOS Music app, subjectively, is total crap ever since iOS 9.

The app no longer cleanly and easily divides music into Songs/Artists/Albums/Playlists as top-level tabs, instead shunting them into menu items within one such tab. The older apps (pre-iOS 7?) even let the user customize which top-level tabs they wanted to see (e.g. Composer).

Again, I bet a lot of this pain would go away if I started using Apple Music, but I'm bothered by a loss in UX.

[ksec]

It is basically three thing, Pre iOS 7, Post iOS 7 Music, and Apple Music.

Pre iOS7 was done under a person who understands and is passionate about Music. Steve Jobs.

iOS 7 was the first major UI redesign Apple had with iOS, all lead by Jony Ive. Going from Hardware Industrial Design to everything "Design". Throwing out everything that Apple UX, UI, HID had over the years. Basically Jony Ive hated Skeuomorphic design ( Previously Lead by Scott Forstall ) so much he throw everything out. Not sure if he just hated Scott or the design. Or possibly both. But it took Apple years to finally walk back on all those decisions. ( The same to Apple Store, but that is another story )

Apple Music was initially just Beats. The whole App design was about that stupid "Next Song" they keep promoting, also from Beats. It was Jimmy Iovine's idea that the computer / iPhone would magically know your mood and play the next song. And somehow Eddy Cue was sold into it. If you ignore the marketing crap, what Jimmy Iovine wanted was for people to discover new music. By either using AI, curated playlist or Apple Radio. For a long time Apple Music doesn't even have repeat the same song button. And the whole UI was designed for you to "discover" music. As a true music nerd this may have been OK, for normally user this is just stuffing random piece of music in front of their face. It wasn't until a few years later they finally accepted defeat and accept the fact the users knows what they want to listen. And what song or artist they are looking for, as well as repeating the same god damn song hundreds of time.

That is how we arrived at today's Apple Music UX. Which might have been OK for any other company and consumer / user. But in my view, still a bloody pile of crap. Instead they are so focused on the social justice aspect and keep telling the media how Apple's paid out to music labels are 10% higher than Spotify. And continue to push Free Trial hoping to push for higher services revenue.

[tehwebguy]

> Again, I bet a lot of this pain would go away if I started using Apple Music, but I'm bothered by a loss in UX.

Nope, I just finished a 3 month trial and it never got any easier. There is no way the person in charge of this app actually uses it day to day (or maybe they've just never used Spotify?)

My biggest grievances:

- Wouldn't be ready to play what I was last listening to immediately, esp if data service was low (Spotify seems always ready to go, even if I haven't explicitly downloaded a song to cache)

- Awful recommendations -- Kept playing songs from the first Tyler, the Creator album when I was listening to vapor/synthwave radio (I like that album but they do not go together!)

[solarkraft]

> Awful recommendations

I've tried Apple Music and Deezer and both just suck at keeping moods. Apple will go from calm piano to noisy experimental hip hop within 2 or 3 tracks.

Spotify recommendations, while still flawed (really every recommendation algorithm should let a user tune some parameters based on mood, like how much new stuff should be included), are by far the best I've heard.

[_pastel]

Have you tried Pandora?

In other ways they are completely outclassed by Spotify, but their mood-respecting recommendations are the best I've seen by far.

[solarkraft]

Unfortunately it's not available in my country.

[Jtsummers]

You can still add (under Library) Composer as one of the selection options, click Edit in the top right.

However, my problem was (was it in iOS 9?) when they moved Downloaded from a permanently set toggle switch to a folder you selected. Which brought you to the exact same view as Library but with only the music on your device. And if you leave the app you may or may not end up in that same view when you return. It made more sense as a setting that you had to deliberately set or unset, not as a "view" of your content where the default was to use more bandwidth and play things you'd deliberately deleted.

[yarcob]

It doesn't go away with Apple Music, they just shove their explore features in your face, and the experience for listening to your favorite artists still sucks.

[celeritascelery]

And whenever you quit Apple Music, it will delete all your playlists, even if they only had music you owned and created before you signed up.

[rainbowzootsuit]

Soundjam MP was great stuff on my Twentieth Anniversary Mac back in the day. iTunes is nearly unusable.