7 ms·

Redesigning Apple Music after Being Rejected

224 points by seangransee 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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abrongersma 9y ago
Music discovery is the primary reason that I've moved away from Apple Music. It's become difficult to explore their music catalog, almost as if it's by design. I've made the move to Spotify and it's been wonderful.
- kingnight 9y ago
  I would move to Spotify because of this same reason but I've never fully been able to understand what they do with your own music that you bring to the library. I have some live recordings for example, how do I get them in my library so that they are available on Computer #1, Mobile Device, and Computer #2 always and forever (a la iTunes Match and now Apple Music).
  - prh8 9y ago
    Google Music allows you to upload your own music, and has a near seamless integration of personal library and streaming. GM at least covers the use case of personal music across all devices, mixed with streaming. Not sure about iTunes Match as I've never used it.
    - tuxidomasx 9y ago
      Co-sign on Google Music. I've started adding all new music I find this way, from albums (one-click torrent download), to singles (youtube/soundcloud-to-mp3 sites). The Google Music Manager can be set to monitor your download directories and uploads any new music to Google Music automatically (even if they are ZIPed). The mobile app is pretty slick too: syncs automatically, and has a 'store music locally' option for when you don't have a good connection.
  - azeirah 9y ago
    Spotify does support local files and can even synchronize them across multiple devices. I noticed today that some of my local songs were available on my work laptop. The process of adding and synchronizing your local music is not the easiest and most intuitive, but it's possible.
- penpapersw 9y ago
  Personally I'm both a nomad and a hoarder. About once a year I'll go on a week long spree finding new music and creating new playlists. The rest of the year I just listen to all those playlists plus my old ones. Neither Apple Music nor Spotify have a workflow specifically designed for this. Am I that unusual?
  - mattnewton 9y ago
    What is wrong with switching between playlists you have created and the discovery options in Spotify today? This sounds like my workflow, but I haven't been frustrated by the UI.
    - penpapersw 9y ago
      I've found it pretty hard to just say "I like this song, show me more like it" and then to be able to listen to each one, and conveniently add ones I like to one of a small set of playlists. Instead, I have to right-click a song and choose "play a radio-station-thingy based on this song" (which usually is a stretch anyway and most of them are nothing like what I'm looking for), and for the few songs I do want to keep, I have to right-click them, find the "add to playlist menu", find the submenu item for the right playlist and click that, and try to re-find my place again in the song queue to start this all over again with the next song. Maybe it's because I'm used to 90s software still and so I just don't know where the right buttons are, and I'm just clicking the wrong things, who knows.
      - mattnewton 9y ago
        Why not just add them to a playlist? At the bottom of the playlist, it will start generating suggestions based on the other songs already in it, that you can continually refresh
  - chrisdbaldwin 9y ago
    This is exactly how I've used Spotify for 5 years.
  - 9y ago
- remarkEon 9y ago
  Same. Beyond Discovery being objectively better on Spotify, curating new playlists from discovered music is a breeze. My discovery of new artists is a primary reason for my use of these services anyway, and I suppose it's possible that simply isn't something Apple prioritizes.
- captainjack2 9y ago
  I agree that discovery is way better with Spotify. I feel like Apple is still hoping people will continue to buy music. Lately I've been using https://www.jqbx.fm https://www.jqbx.fm . Which is a more a turntable.fm approach but hooks into your Spotify account so you can save things for later and DJ from your existing playlists. Definitely helped me discover a lot of new stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise.
- jobu 9y ago
  Interesting. I've been thinking about switching to Apple Music to have a bit more control over my music. Spotify puts out some amazing curated playlists that are constantly being updated, but then after a few weeks those playlists suddenly turn to shit. My theory is that they have a few people manually curate a list with good songs for a while to train an AI, but when they finally turn control over to the AI it falls on its face and starts adding shitty cover band music to the list.
  - mattnewton 9y ago
    It could be that, for some genres, they start with the greatest hits and then have to scrape further and further towards the bottom of the barrel
  - hbosch 9y ago
    You will appreciate Every Noise at Once[0] maybe. It's all AI, but uses data from a massive set of users. It maps all chartable Spotify genres, and groups them into 3 playlists each. So for the genre, say "classic french pop"[1], you'd click in and see all the associated bands within that genre and see Spotify playlist links – they are: The Sound of Classic French Pop – A sampling of music that defines the genre The Pulse of Classic French Pop – Music that is often played by people who listen to lots of Classic French Pop The Edge of Classic French Pop – New or obscure music recommended for people who like Classic French Pop It's an incredibly deep web of playlists and music recommendations that has completely changed the way I experience Spotify. Highly highly recommend. __ 0. http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html 1. http://everynoise.com/engenremap-classicfrenchpop.html http://everynoise.com/engenremap-classicfrenchpop.html
    - CamperBob2 9y ago
      Hmm. This is pretty damned cool. I'd subscribe to Spotify if this were a real interface to its catalog.
      - jeppebemad 9y ago
        I agree - Very cool! Under playlists you can launch in Spotify a playlist of every genre. Is that what you were missing? Thanks parent!
- santaclaus 9y ago
  On the other hand, Apple Music has a much wider selection than Spotify (at least in the genres that I typically listen to). I'll often read a review in Pitchfork, and go check out some of the bands they name drop. I have yet to find missing records in Apple Music, but Spotify was horrible in this regard.
  - 91bananas 9y ago
    What are you listening to that you cannot find on there? I have a pretty eclectic taste and have been shocked at the amount of small time stuff that Spotify actually does have
    - santaclaus 9y ago
      When noise pop came through SF I was checking out a bunch of the bands, and many of them had very incomplete discographies on Spotify. Even Ty Segall, a pretty mainstream act, had almost 3/4 of his releases missing from Spotify.
- Thlom 9y ago
  I've been using Spotify since 2008, but lately the app on iOS has become a massive battery hog. I usually start playing music when I leave home and continue playing a few hours at work. But after about an hour at work my phone is burning hot and the battery has drained massively. It's ridiculous and makes me want to move back to Apple Music.
  - nxc18 9y ago
    Did you switch to Bluetooth headphones at some point? I've noticed battery performance is much worse when using Bluetooth, yet that is the trendy thing these days.
    - Thlom 9y ago
      Nope. Always wired when the phone heats up like a frying pan. Playing podcasts does not drain the battery. Did not have the problem on iPhone 6, only noticed after switching to iPhone 7, and only really the last few weeks, but I see their support forum is full of complaints dating back a while.
zyang 9y ago
I think the hoarder vs nomad analogy is excellent. Apple Music has come a long way since the hoarder heavy model, but still a long way to go before catching up to Spotify's discovery.
phaed 9y ago
I'd say remove that first quote you have on there. No one was thinking that, but as soon as you said it, I couldn't help but have it in my mind the whole time reading the article.
pfarnsworth 9y ago
I want Apple Music to just play my fucking music. When I'm driving in my car, trying to manipulate the buttons, etc, is almost impossible and in a rage I turn it off. There is so much fucking swiping and hitting small buttons it's tremendously frustrating. I usually listen to music in my car, as opposed to in the office, so I want big buttons and easy navigation. Does no one have an app that is designed specifically for car use?
- itbeho 9y ago
  I switched to Cesium after experiencing Music randomly enabling repeat or shuffle with no intuitive way to disable. Turns out you need to swipe up "from the bottom" where "bottom" is somewhere 1/3 of the way up to see those options.
- Angostura 9y ago
  I suspect Apple would like you to be using CarPlay rather than using an interface specifically not meant to be used while driving.
  - massysett 9y ago
    That's a great idea. However, CarPlay is only available if you have a late-model car, or if you replace your car stereo with a new one. Neither of these is cheap options, and replacing the car stereo may not even be possible if your car is too old to host one of these new units with the huge screen. Further, having an interface that is problematic for driving is not problematic ONLY for driving. I use music services while exercising, either outside or on an indoor machine. I'm bouncing around, I don't want to stop, and it's hard to hit these tiny little UI elements while I'm moving. The UI for listening to music while exercising (or driving) is actually far inferior for most touch screens when compared to an old iPod with click wheel or even an old Sony Walkman cassette player. Add in the fact that CarPlay on my late model car is incredibly glitchy. The situation is so bad that I wonder if I would be better off putting music on USB flash drives and plugging those into my car.
    - 9y ago
pducks32 9y ago
I love Apple Music and he perfectly captures my frustrations with it. Beats 1 and Curated playlists are my favorite thing yet there are so many simple things I can't do. Reminders for shows. Easy navigation to shows I always listen to. Being able to add something to my library which won't work because some Curated playlist I have already have it added. I hope iOS 11 deals with many of these problems. To know that someone else shares my frustrations gives me hope that Apple does too.
grandalf 9y ago
Great job on the redesign! My biggest UX gripe with Apple Music is that the app doesn't open into the same state it was in last time I used it. I'm not sure if this is an intentional decision meant to generate algorithmic feed impressions (or some other reason), or an oversight.
qubyte 9y ago
The "headshots" idea seems to be optimised for the listening habits of the author of this post. Not every artist (and almost none in my library) is a singular person. For that matter, I don't really care what the artist looks like. I'm more likely to recognise a logo when available, or an album cover failing that.
- sleepychu 9y ago
  Agreed, I think the author thought "Tinder is cool, what about Tinder for music?"
- brusch64 9y ago
  I can't recognize a single artist from his screenshots besides Lady Gaga. MusicBee has some kind of band shot next to each band name. It is nice - but in my list most of the bands are 3 to 5 dudes, so you can't really recognize the bands with the headshot. But I am definitely the hoarder type from his characterization - so his music player is most definitely not the one for me.
nsxwolf 9y ago
I'm not in the Tinder generation so I don't want my music to work that way. Software should work well for everyone.
- charlesdenault 9y ago
  The gestures demonstrated are easily discoverable and are so widely used now, I'd argue the majority of iOS/Android users are familiar. Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, etc. all follow these similar UI/UX features. Software should work well for everyone, but it's evolving and users adapt.
  - nsxwolf 9y ago
    I'm not sure which features of Tinder are part of my daily UX. I know it has a different notion of "swipe left/swipe right" than most things I use - in the apps I use that means "go back a page/go forward a page". In Tinder I'm vaguely aware that one direction means "I want to have sex with you", but I am not aware which direction that is.
    - ledak 9y ago
      There are hints, so swiping doesn't seem unintuitive. Btw, I've used tinder-like gestures for my music discovery app based on Apple Music API ( https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1182799885 https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1182799885 ). I think this pattern works perfectly for binary decisions.
- floatboth 9y ago
  I am in the Tinder generation and I use VLC on the desktop to play music (Media Library, Detailed List mode) :D And Apollo (LineageOS "Music" app) on mobile.
fao_ 9y ago
> Wouldn’t it be awesome if, immediately after checking into a café on Facebook, Apple Music updates this Mood section to Focus/Study playlists? This strikes me as being extremely, invasively creepy -- although I can appreciate that some people might find this cool.
- duiker101 9y ago
  I find it interesting that this would happen based on a cafe location rather than a library...
  - nicky0 9y ago
    Reminds me of the recent article about cafés turning off wifi to stop people using them as offices.
- plttn 9y ago
  FWIW, Google Play Music already does something similar. It knows I'm at the location I have my work set to, and one of the playlist categories it's showing in my home feed is "Working to a Beat - Looks like you're at work".
  - bestnameever 9y ago
    more info: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2180223/google-play-music-service-knows-how-you-feel-and-will-play-songs-to-suit-your-mood/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2180223/google-play-music-serv...
charlesdenault 9y ago
This is an incredible redesign, utilizing widely known gestures (swipes, double taps, etc). Apple should embrace these further, IMO, and a casual-use app like Music makes the most sense. I'm a longtime Spotify Premium user and I tried v1 of Music but it was jus too painful. This would have made me stay. Great job.
- tracker1 9y ago
  I think the swipe gestures for add/next should probably be left/right to match tinder... not that it's really much better than up/down, it is somewhat more natural to swipe from side to side in terms of holding the device casually.
ProfessorLayton 9y ago
Apple Music is by far the least polished Apple product I use on a regular basis (I'm on a family plan). There are so my UX problems with it I don't know where to start. Biggest issues: - Discoverability is awful. Playlists are ok, but heavily recommending entire albums is bizarre. Its like trying new foods by going to Costco. It would make more sense to select top picks from an artist. - Extremely ungraceful handling of spotty cell coverage. Playback will abruptly stop to buffer, but the UI gives absolutely no feedback. The play/pause button just behaves as if I told it to stop, and is unresponsive to my input. This is especially terrible while driving, where playback can stop for other reasons (Like a bluetooth disconnect). - Radio stations inexplicably play at lower volumes than the rest of the service. The radio tab is pretty much a giant banner for whatever Apple wants to push, instead of basing it around the user. - Really buggy. It will arbitrarily skip to the next song in the middle of playback. Sometimes it will refuse to play a song in my library, and will move on to the next. No error, no feedback, nothing. I could go on and on. I really wish this was its own app on the App Store, so we could have some semblance of feedback. As well as regular bug fixes without waiting for the next iOS release.
- luigi23 9y ago
  Totally agree. I have subscriptions in both services, Apple Music and Spotify. Im still wondering how its possible that Spotify managed to handle smooth buffering way more better than Apple. It works flawlessly, even when Im entering and leaving airplane mode during loading song. On Apple music, both on Mac and iPhone, it needs to prebuffer for few seconds and is laggy when I quickly skip songs. Just awful.
  - ardit33 9y ago
    Former Spotify engineer here. The reason you see Spotify excelling in streaming performance is that Spotify has both some very smart people working both in Europe and NYC to make that happen and Spotify made mobile streaming performance (to feel like a local file playback) a number one priority. Also apple's offering is a reaction to Spotify's success and it suffers the "sequel effect" where the me too product is not that good. Their previous model was track downloads. Also it is not a Big Corp vs Startup, but more of a team in a Big Corp vs well funded Startup that is dedicated to that mission. (I'd say Spotify is way past the startup stage so it is more of Big Corp doing many things vs Big Corp doing only one thing).
deeth_starr_v 9y ago
Good for him. I cancelled my subscription with the launch of 2.0. Just awful and buggy as hell.
tunesmith 9y ago
Apple Music has freaked me out because I have a lot of my own recordings - rehearsals, etc. After turning on iCloud sharing, it uploaded most of them, but it says others aren't available, and some of them got matched incorrectly. They say when that happens, to delete them from your source library and then re-add to let Apple match it again, since it apparently gets more accurate over time. I haven't tried that yet since it's a huge project to back up my recordings in a separate location and then re-add (even though I have the library itself backed up). The other thing I can do is cancel my iCloud sharing / match account, but then I'm not sure what happens to my recordings - even though it's my source account, I've heard horror stories about iTunes deleting some recordings on account cancellation if they've been categorized incorrectly. So I've just felt sort of stuck until I find time to do some major surgery.
- eridius 9y ago
  You're overthinking it. If you turn off iCloud Music Library, any music you already had on your computer is fine. This means your pre-existing music library will be fine (assuming you didn't delete the music files off of your computer). Yes, there was a bug at one point that could cause it to delete some of your existing music, but it was relatively rare and was fixed shortly after it was discovered. As for matching, are you adding it from your iPhone, or from your computer? Music matching is a lot more exact if you're adding it from your computer.
  - tunesmith 9y ago
    That bug must be what I remembered - I missed that it got fixed, all I heard was that Apple was working on it. Thanks for letting me know, I think I might nervously shut it off and revert to manually controlling what songs are on my phone. Do you remember any sources on what it was and when/how it got fixed? I added them from my laptop - I find the matching pretty lousy, though. Bjork recordings are replaced by acoustic remixes, live-radio performances of songs are replaced by studio recordings, etc. And then of course some of my own songs are replaced by weird recordings I've never heard before. It seems that any time I'm out and about and listen to a playlist for 30-45 minutes, at least 1-2 songs are wrong. All of these recordings are of course still fine on my laptop itself - I know not to delete those.
paul7986 9y ago
Apple Music is a horrid UI/UX! So confusing and way behind Spotify yet I use it everyday. I'd love to shuffle all my songs and also have Apple Music play similar tracks to my huge song playlist. Discovering music is a chore in Apple Music. I actually have to hunt and peck through a bloated UI. From a frustrated customer!!!
- FridgeSeal 9y ago
  The Apple Music UI is hands down one of the ugliest, worst designs interfaces I've had the displeasure of using. I have no idea what's going on in Apple, but along with iTunes, it feels like every new version gets worse in some way. Why is the font so big and so bold? Why is there so much empty space? It goes far beyond whitespace: there's just large unused chunks. Why do I have to go all the way back to the first screen to swap between albums and artists? The now playing section at the bottom of the screen has pause and skip buttons that are inexplicably enormous. I can't put my finger on it for sure (because I don't have an iPhone atm) but why is it that the font (typeface and weight) in Apple Music is different to the rest of the OS?
- eddieroger 9y ago
  > yet I use it everyday. That's the thing, though - they have no incentive to change it since it's used. Apple always took their UI risks in iTunes, so it makes sense for them to do it here, too. If Apple Music usage was low, I'm sure they'd rethink thing, but if it's used within their expectations, there's no reason to change it. > way behind Spotify Never though I'd read agree with that. Spotify on iOS only recently got their act together. For a very long time, I thought their app was terrible. Then, they embraced the tab bar and all was right in the world. In this case, I agree that Spotify has a more pleasing UI than Apple Music, but I still use both regularly.
cphoover 9y ago
Should have hired you...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- puranjay 9y ago
  I've never worked at a large company, but how is it that a single designer is able to cook up something that looks and feels better than what a team of talented designers at a $500B company came up with - for a clearly important product?
  - sleepychu 9y ago
    I think part of it is business constraints. This designer respected Apple's aesthetic but didn't have some manager telling them to make 'Connect' happen.
  - qqg3 9y ago
    Designing for the user vs design for the business. These two are fairly often very different demands and balancing that can be challenging.
  - supercoder 9y ago
    Because it takes hardly any of the real world constraints into consideration. If you're designing for the 15 artists / albums in his mockup, then yeah , this is fine. But that's not the real world case.
    - eshvk 9y ago
      Also things like qualitative user testing, a/b testing would go into every single pixel of his design. I am not particularly sure if the most important separation of the music listening population is into hoarders vs nomads. You'd evaluate that, make a decision. Things might get muddled there.
tedmiston 9y ago
Anyone else experiencing this page crashing and force reloading every 1-2 minutes in Safari on iOS?
- dmlittle 9y ago
  Yes, but I thought it was the HN app[1] I was using [1] http://hn.premii.com/about/ http://hn.premii.com/about/
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
pawelkomarnicki 9y ago
I switched to Apple Music after Google Play, and Groove (Microsoft Music), and it's most frictionless library I used so far :-) I just don't give a damn about polishing my playlists into oblivion, I just want some selection of music, put it on my phone, shuffle. Curated playlists from Apple are the best I've seen lately.
dvcrn 9y ago
I never went back to Apple Music after they wiped my playlists. I used the 3 months trial and spent countless hours finding and adding all my music back. Little did I know that if your subscription is interrupted, Apple Music will wipe all your stuff immediately. I wanted to wait for the iOS10 version but as soon as i re-subscribed I just found all my stuff missing. Other services like google music and Spotify keep your stuff in place and don't actually delete anything. I thought this might have been a bug, but no - my girlfriend just last month switched to Spotify because of the same issue. She had to take a month break from the service and when she re-subscribed her beloved playlists have been wiped.

224 points by seangransee 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

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abrongersma 9y ago

Music discovery is the primary reason that I've moved away from Apple Music. It's become difficult to explore their music catalog, almost as if it's by design. I've made the move to Spotify and it's been wonderful.

kingnight 9y ago
I would move to Spotify because of this same reason but I've never fully been able to understand what they do with your own music that you bring to the library. I have some live recordings for example, how do I get them in my library so that they are available on Computer #1, Mobile Device, and Computer #2 always and forever (a la iTunes Match and now Apple Music).
- prh8 9y ago
  Google Music allows you to upload your own music, and has a near seamless integration of personal library and streaming. GM at least covers the use case of personal music across all devices, mixed with streaming. Not sure about iTunes Match as I've never used it.
  - tuxidomasx 9y ago
    Co-sign on Google Music. I've started adding all new music I find this way, from albums (one-click torrent download), to singles (youtube/soundcloud-to-mp3 sites). The Google Music Manager can be set to monitor your download directories and uploads any new music to Google Music automatically (even if they are ZIPed). The mobile app is pretty slick too: syncs automatically, and has a 'store music locally' option for when you don't have a good connection.
- azeirah 9y ago
  Spotify does support local files and can even synchronize them across multiple devices. I noticed today that some of my local songs were available on my work laptop. The process of adding and synchronizing your local music is not the easiest and most intuitive, but it's possible.
penpapersw 9y ago
Personally I'm both a nomad and a hoarder. About once a year I'll go on a week long spree finding new music and creating new playlists. The rest of the year I just listen to all those playlists plus my old ones. Neither Apple Music nor Spotify have a workflow specifically designed for this. Am I that unusual?
- mattnewton 9y ago
  What is wrong with switching between playlists you have created and the discovery options in Spotify today? This sounds like my workflow, but I haven't been frustrated by the UI.
  - penpapersw 9y ago
    I've found it pretty hard to just say "I like this song, show me more like it" and then to be able to listen to each one, and conveniently add ones I like to one of a small set of playlists. Instead, I have to right-click a song and choose "play a radio-station-thingy based on this song" (which usually is a stretch anyway and most of them are nothing like what I'm looking for), and for the few songs I do want to keep, I have to right-click them, find the "add to playlist menu", find the submenu item for the right playlist and click that, and try to re-find my place again in the song queue to start this all over again with the next song. Maybe it's because I'm used to 90s software still and so I just don't know where the right buttons are, and I'm just clicking the wrong things, who knows.
    - mattnewton 9y ago
      Why not just add them to a playlist? At the bottom of the playlist, it will start generating suggestions based on the other songs already in it, that you can continually refresh
- chrisdbaldwin 9y ago
  This is exactly how I've used Spotify for 5 years.
- 9y ago
remarkEon 9y ago
Same. Beyond Discovery being objectively better on Spotify, curating new playlists from discovered music is a breeze. My discovery of new artists is a primary reason for my use of these services anyway, and I suppose it's possible that simply isn't something Apple prioritizes.
captainjack2 9y ago
I agree that discovery is way better with Spotify. I feel like Apple is still hoping people will continue to buy music. Lately I've been using https://www.jqbx.fm https://www.jqbx.fm . Which is a more a turntable.fm approach but hooks into your Spotify account so you can save things for later and DJ from your existing playlists. Definitely helped me discover a lot of new stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise.
jobu 9y ago
Interesting. I've been thinking about switching to Apple Music to have a bit more control over my music. Spotify puts out some amazing curated playlists that are constantly being updated, but then after a few weeks those playlists suddenly turn to shit. My theory is that they have a few people manually curate a list with good songs for a while to train an AI, but when they finally turn control over to the AI it falls on its face and starts adding shitty cover band music to the list.
- mattnewton 9y ago
  It could be that, for some genres, they start with the greatest hits and then have to scrape further and further towards the bottom of the barrel
- hbosch 9y ago
  You will appreciate Every Noise at Once[0] maybe. It's all AI, but uses data from a massive set of users. It maps all chartable Spotify genres, and groups them into 3 playlists each. So for the genre, say "classic french pop"[1], you'd click in and see all the associated bands within that genre and see Spotify playlist links – they are: The Sound of Classic French Pop – A sampling of music that defines the genre The Pulse of Classic French Pop – Music that is often played by people who listen to lots of Classic French Pop The Edge of Classic French Pop – New or obscure music recommended for people who like Classic French Pop It's an incredibly deep web of playlists and music recommendations that has completely changed the way I experience Spotify. Highly highly recommend. __ 0. http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html 1. http://everynoise.com/engenremap-classicfrenchpop.html http://everynoise.com/engenremap-classicfrenchpop.html
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    Hmm. This is pretty damned cool. I'd subscribe to Spotify if this were a real interface to its catalog.
    - jeppebemad 9y ago
      I agree - Very cool! Under playlists you can launch in Spotify a playlist of every genre. Is that what you were missing? Thanks parent!
santaclaus 9y ago
On the other hand, Apple Music has a much wider selection than Spotify (at least in the genres that I typically listen to). I'll often read a review in Pitchfork, and go check out some of the bands they name drop. I have yet to find missing records in Apple Music, but Spotify was horrible in this regard.
- 91bananas 9y ago
  What are you listening to that you cannot find on there? I have a pretty eclectic taste and have been shocked at the amount of small time stuff that Spotify actually does have
  - santaclaus 9y ago
    When noise pop came through SF I was checking out a bunch of the bands, and many of them had very incomplete discographies on Spotify. Even Ty Segall, a pretty mainstream act, had almost 3/4 of his releases missing from Spotify.
Thlom 9y ago
I've been using Spotify since 2008, but lately the app on iOS has become a massive battery hog. I usually start playing music when I leave home and continue playing a few hours at work. But after about an hour at work my phone is burning hot and the battery has drained massively. It's ridiculous and makes me want to move back to Apple Music.
- nxc18 9y ago
  Did you switch to Bluetooth headphones at some point? I've noticed battery performance is much worse when using Bluetooth, yet that is the trendy thing these days.
  - Thlom 9y ago
    Nope. Always wired when the phone heats up like a frying pan. Playing podcasts does not drain the battery. Did not have the problem on iPhone 6, only noticed after switching to iPhone 7, and only really the last few weeks, but I see their support forum is full of complaints dating back a while.

zyang 9y ago

I think the hoarder vs nomad analogy is excellent. Apple Music has come a long way since the hoarder heavy model, but still a long way to go before catching up to Spotify's discovery.

phaed 9y ago

I'd say remove that first quote you have on there. No one was thinking that, but as soon as you said it, I couldn't help but have it in my mind the whole time reading the article.

pfarnsworth 9y ago

I want Apple Music to just play my fucking music. When I'm driving in my car, trying to manipulate the buttons, etc, is almost impossible and in a rage I turn it off. There is so much fucking swiping and hitting small buttons it's tremendously frustrating. I usually listen to music in my car, as opposed to in the office, so I want big buttons and easy navigation. Does no one have an app that is designed specifically for car use?

itbeho 9y ago
I switched to Cesium after experiencing Music randomly enabling repeat or shuffle with no intuitive way to disable. Turns out you need to swipe up "from the bottom" where "bottom" is somewhere 1/3 of the way up to see those options.
Angostura 9y ago
I suspect Apple would like you to be using CarPlay rather than using an interface specifically not meant to be used while driving.
- massysett 9y ago
  That's a great idea. However, CarPlay is only available if you have a late-model car, or if you replace your car stereo with a new one. Neither of these is cheap options, and replacing the car stereo may not even be possible if your car is too old to host one of these new units with the huge screen. Further, having an interface that is problematic for driving is not problematic ONLY for driving. I use music services while exercising, either outside or on an indoor machine. I'm bouncing around, I don't want to stop, and it's hard to hit these tiny little UI elements while I'm moving. The UI for listening to music while exercising (or driving) is actually far inferior for most touch screens when compared to an old iPod with click wheel or even an old Sony Walkman cassette player. Add in the fact that CarPlay on my late model car is incredibly glitchy. The situation is so bad that I wonder if I would be better off putting music on USB flash drives and plugging those into my car.
  - 9y ago

pducks32 9y ago

I love Apple Music and he perfectly captures my frustrations with it. Beats 1 and Curated playlists are my favorite thing yet there are so many simple things I can't do. Reminders for shows. Easy navigation to shows I always listen to. Being able to add something to my library which won't work because some Curated playlist I have already have it added. I hope iOS 11 deals with many of these problems. To know that someone else shares my frustrations gives me hope that Apple does too.

grandalf 9y ago

Great job on the redesign! My biggest UX gripe with Apple Music is that the app doesn't open into the same state it was in last time I used it. I'm not sure if this is an intentional decision meant to generate algorithmic feed impressions (or some other reason), or an oversight.

qubyte 9y ago

The "headshots" idea seems to be optimised for the listening habits of the author of this post. Not every artist (and almost none in my library) is a singular person. For that matter, I don't really care what the artist looks like. I'm more likely to recognise a logo when available, or an album cover failing that.

sleepychu 9y ago
Agreed, I think the author thought "Tinder is cool, what about Tinder for music?"
brusch64 9y ago
I can't recognize a single artist from his screenshots besides Lady Gaga. MusicBee has some kind of band shot next to each band name. It is nice - but in my list most of the bands are 3 to 5 dudes, so you can't really recognize the bands with the headshot. But I am definitely the hoarder type from his characterization - so his music player is most definitely not the one for me.

nsxwolf 9y ago

I'm not in the Tinder generation so I don't want my music to work that way. Software should work well for everyone.

charlesdenault 9y ago
The gestures demonstrated are easily discoverable and are so widely used now, I'd argue the majority of iOS/Android users are familiar. Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, etc. all follow these similar UI/UX features. Software should work well for everyone, but it's evolving and users adapt.
- nsxwolf 9y ago
  I'm not sure which features of Tinder are part of my daily UX. I know it has a different notion of "swipe left/swipe right" than most things I use - in the apps I use that means "go back a page/go forward a page". In Tinder I'm vaguely aware that one direction means "I want to have sex with you", but I am not aware which direction that is.
  - ledak 9y ago
    There are hints, so swiping doesn't seem unintuitive. Btw, I've used tinder-like gestures for my music discovery app based on Apple Music API ( https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1182799885 https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1182799885 ). I think this pattern works perfectly for binary decisions.
floatboth 9y ago
I am in the Tinder generation and I use VLC on the desktop to play music (Media Library, Detailed List mode) :D And Apollo (LineageOS "Music" app) on mobile.

fao_ 9y ago

> Wouldn’t it be awesome if, immediately after checking into a café on Facebook, Apple Music updates this Mood section to Focus/Study playlists? This strikes me as being extremely, invasively creepy -- although I can appreciate that some people might find this cool.

duiker101 9y ago
I find it interesting that this would happen based on a cafe location rather than a library...
- nicky0 9y ago
  Reminds me of the recent article about cafés turning off wifi to stop people using them as offices.
plttn 9y ago
FWIW, Google Play Music already does something similar. It knows I'm at the location I have my work set to, and one of the playlist categories it's showing in my home feed is "Working to a Beat - Looks like you're at work".
- bestnameever 9y ago
  more info: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2180223/google-play-music-service-knows-how-you-feel-and-will-play-songs-to-suit-your-mood/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2180223/google-play-music-serv...

charlesdenault 9y ago

This is an incredible redesign, utilizing widely known gestures (swipes, double taps, etc). Apple should embrace these further, IMO, and a casual-use app like Music makes the most sense. I'm a longtime Spotify Premium user and I tried v1 of Music but it was jus too painful. This would have made me stay. Great job.

tracker1 9y ago
I think the swipe gestures for add/next should probably be left/right to match tinder... not that it's really much better than up/down, it is somewhat more natural to swipe from side to side in terms of holding the device casually.

ProfessorLayton 9y ago

Apple Music is by far the least polished Apple product I use on a regular basis (I'm on a family plan). There are so my UX problems with it I don't know where to start. Biggest issues: - Discoverability is awful. Playlists are ok, but heavily recommending entire albums is bizarre. Its like trying new foods by going to Costco. It would make more sense to select top picks from an artist. - Extremely ungraceful handling of spotty cell coverage. Playback will abruptly stop to buffer, but the UI gives absolutely no feedback. The play/pause button just behaves as if I told it to stop, and is unresponsive to my input. This is especially terrible while driving, where playback can stop for other reasons (Like a bluetooth disconnect). - Radio stations inexplicably play at lower volumes than the rest of the service. The radio tab is pretty much a giant banner for whatever Apple wants to push, instead of basing it around the user. - Really buggy. It will arbitrarily skip to the next song in the middle of playback. Sometimes it will refuse to play a song in my library, and will move on to the next. No error, no feedback, nothing. I could go on and on. I really wish this was its own app on the App Store, so we could have some semblance of feedback. As well as regular bug fixes without waiting for the next iOS release.

luigi23 9y ago
Totally agree. I have subscriptions in both services, Apple Music and Spotify. Im still wondering how its possible that Spotify managed to handle smooth buffering way more better than Apple. It works flawlessly, even when Im entering and leaving airplane mode during loading song. On Apple music, both on Mac and iPhone, it needs to prebuffer for few seconds and is laggy when I quickly skip songs. Just awful.
- ardit33 9y ago
  Former Spotify engineer here. The reason you see Spotify excelling in streaming performance is that Spotify has both some very smart people working both in Europe and NYC to make that happen and Spotify made mobile streaming performance (to feel like a local file playback) a number one priority. Also apple's offering is a reaction to Spotify's success and it suffers the "sequel effect" where the me too product is not that good. Their previous model was track downloads. Also it is not a Big Corp vs Startup, but more of a team in a Big Corp vs well funded Startup that is dedicated to that mission. (I'd say Spotify is way past the startup stage so it is more of Big Corp doing many things vs Big Corp doing only one thing).

deeth_starr_v 9y ago

Good for him. I cancelled my subscription with the launch of 2.0. Just awful and buggy as hell.

tunesmith 9y ago

Apple Music has freaked me out because I have a lot of my own recordings - rehearsals, etc. After turning on iCloud sharing, it uploaded most of them, but it says others aren't available, and some of them got matched incorrectly. They say when that happens, to delete them from your source library and then re-add to let Apple match it again, since it apparently gets more accurate over time. I haven't tried that yet since it's a huge project to back up my recordings in a separate location and then re-add (even though I have the library itself backed up). The other thing I can do is cancel my iCloud sharing / match account, but then I'm not sure what happens to my recordings - even though it's my source account, I've heard horror stories about iTunes deleting some recordings on account cancellation if they've been categorized incorrectly. So I've just felt sort of stuck until I find time to do some major surgery.

eridius 9y ago
You're overthinking it. If you turn off iCloud Music Library, any music you already had on your computer is fine. This means your pre-existing music library will be fine (assuming you didn't delete the music files off of your computer). Yes, there was a bug at one point that could cause it to delete some of your existing music, but it was relatively rare and was fixed shortly after it was discovered. As for matching, are you adding it from your iPhone, or from your computer? Music matching is a lot more exact if you're adding it from your computer.
- tunesmith 9y ago
  That bug must be what I remembered - I missed that it got fixed, all I heard was that Apple was working on it. Thanks for letting me know, I think I might nervously shut it off and revert to manually controlling what songs are on my phone. Do you remember any sources on what it was and when/how it got fixed? I added them from my laptop - I find the matching pretty lousy, though. Bjork recordings are replaced by acoustic remixes, live-radio performances of songs are replaced by studio recordings, etc. And then of course some of my own songs are replaced by weird recordings I've never heard before. It seems that any time I'm out and about and listen to a playlist for 30-45 minutes, at least 1-2 songs are wrong. All of these recordings are of course still fine on my laptop itself - I know not to delete those.

paul7986 9y ago

Apple Music is a horrid UI/UX! So confusing and way behind Spotify yet I use it everyday. I'd love to shuffle all my songs and also have Apple Music play similar tracks to my huge song playlist. Discovering music is a chore in Apple Music. I actually have to hunt and peck through a bloated UI. From a frustrated customer!!!

FridgeSeal 9y ago
The Apple Music UI is hands down one of the ugliest, worst designs interfaces I've had the displeasure of using. I have no idea what's going on in Apple, but along with iTunes, it feels like every new version gets worse in some way. Why is the font so big and so bold? Why is there so much empty space? It goes far beyond whitespace: there's just large unused chunks. Why do I have to go all the way back to the first screen to swap between albums and artists? The now playing section at the bottom of the screen has pause and skip buttons that are inexplicably enormous. I can't put my finger on it for sure (because I don't have an iPhone atm) but why is it that the font (typeface and weight) in Apple Music is different to the rest of the OS?
eddieroger 9y ago
> yet I use it everyday. That's the thing, though - they have no incentive to change it since it's used. Apple always took their UI risks in iTunes, so it makes sense for them to do it here, too. If Apple Music usage was low, I'm sure they'd rethink thing, but if it's used within their expectations, there's no reason to change it. > way behind Spotify Never though I'd read agree with that. Spotify on iOS only recently got their act together. For a very long time, I thought their app was terrible. Then, they embraced the tab bar and all was right in the world. In this case, I agree that Spotify has a more pleasing UI than Apple Music, but I still use both regularly.

cphoover 9y ago

Should have hired you...

deleted 9y ago
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puranjay 9y ago
I've never worked at a large company, but how is it that a single designer is able to cook up something that looks and feels better than what a team of talented designers at a $500B company came up with - for a clearly important product?
- sleepychu 9y ago
  I think part of it is business constraints. This designer respected Apple's aesthetic but didn't have some manager telling them to make 'Connect' happen.
- qqg3 9y ago
  Designing for the user vs design for the business. These two are fairly often very different demands and balancing that can be challenging.
- supercoder 9y ago
  Because it takes hardly any of the real world constraints into consideration. If you're designing for the 15 artists / albums in his mockup, then yeah , this is fine. But that's not the real world case.
  - eshvk 9y ago
    Also things like qualitative user testing, a/b testing would go into every single pixel of his design. I am not particularly sure if the most important separation of the music listening population is into hoarders vs nomads. You'd evaluate that, make a decision. Things might get muddled there.

tedmiston 9y ago

Anyone else experiencing this page crashing and force reloading every 1-2 minutes in Safari on iOS?

dmlittle 9y ago
Yes, but I thought it was the HN app[1] I was using [1] http://hn.premii.com/about/ http://hn.premii.com/about/
deleted 9y ago
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pawelkomarnicki 9y ago

I switched to Apple Music after Google Play, and Groove (Microsoft Music), and it's most frictionless library I used so far :-) I just don't give a damn about polishing my playlists into oblivion, I just want some selection of music, put it on my phone, shuffle. Curated playlists from Apple are the best I've seen lately.

dvcrn 9y ago

I never went back to Apple Music after they wiped my playlists. I used the 3 months trial and spent countless hours finding and adding all my music back. Little did I know that if your subscription is interrupted, Apple Music will wipe all your stuff immediately. I wanted to wait for the iOS10 version but as soon as i re-subscribed I just found all my stuff missing. Other services like google music and Spotify keep your stuff in place and don't actually delete anything. I thought this might have been a bug, but no - my girlfriend just last month switched to Spotify because of the same issue. She had to take a month break from the service and when she re-subscribed her beloved playlists have been wiped.