[cosmotic]

"Why isn’t it touching the edges of the screen?"

Why should it? One of the reasons it shouldn't touch is because it artificially creates a full-bleed line that separates the content and conveys that they are disconnected when they aren't.

"Why can’t I read the album name from the cover?"

It can't be read because that's apparently what the artist intended. Many album covers don't even have the album title printed on it.

"why can’t I see that The Who took a piss on the monolith?"

You can't read everything even on 1:1 replication of the album; but your phone is unconditionally smaller than an actual album cover.

"So much creativity, imagination and artistry thrown in the bin for no good reason."

It's not throwing anything away; it's making up for numerous design constraints.

[AlexandrB]

A lot of the talk around getting rid of skeuomorphism was about putting the content front and centre. This seems like the opposite of that. The content is reduced to a little box and the miles of padding that seems "necessary" for a modern UI is the real focus.

[cosmotic]

Skeuomorphism was a largely misguided but not altogether bad design direction. Putting content front and center is a separate design direction that has its own tradeoffs. Massive margins everywhere is another design direction that I think is almost entirely misguided.

I'm perfectly happy with the larger of the inset album art screenshots, but the smallest I agree is much too small.