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Comment by stcredzero | Hacker News Reader

I really wish the Music app would just act like my old iPod. I have some set of music available. It's categorized in different ways I can set. It plays music. Done.

Streaming? Just treat it as a playlist. Remember a song off a stream? Make that be like an adhoc playlist. Just let me mash a button and play music. Let me hit a button, and it remembers the current song. Want to let me pick a stream? Let me navigate just a few steps down a menu and pick something. Hit play. Music. Done.

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I feel like it's designed to steer you away from the concept of having a music collection and toward a more fluid streaming approach. This in turn could have revenue motives-- payola, ad revenue, etc.

In any case count me out. I'm on the brink of dumping Apple for all music. I hate things on principle that feel like they're designed to "guide me" toward a desired "consumer behavior."

I also hate what this does to music. Music isn't meaningful in this model. It's a formless uniform commodity that you consume on demand. Maybe that works for disposable pop that all sounds the same but not for music you care about.

I wish that were the only problem... Unfortunately, even as someone ready to embrace "Music as a service", it's quite frustrating. I only use it every few days, and I don't know how many times I've tried to find something in "Apple Music", only to get lost somewhere in the pay-to-own-store (which I've never used). It seems Apple Music just doesn't show up if they don't have it, or maybe when iTunes fails to connect to the authorization server (which would bring us to problem 2: hey Apple! How about something like 10 minutes grace period? I'm online 98% of the time, but iTunes seems to immediately stop if I'm not).

> I feel like it's designed to steer you away from the concept of having a music collection and toward a more fluid streaming approach.

This is definitely why. It's also why Apple barely pays attention to the iPod line and hasn't shown any interest in making a large storage device like the iPod classic (which I foolishly sold!).

Great for when you go out of the country and away from a wifi connection so have no access to data. One step forward and two steps backward.

I use it every day. It pretty much does those things. The little Heart button is your "remember the current song".

The really confusing/annoying thing for me is there's no history AFAIK. So no looking up the previous song if you didn't get to hit the heart button because you were driving. Even finding a previous streaming/radio playlist is impossible sometimes. Click away from it, and now how do you get back? On the iPad: You don't AFAICT. Best you can do is bring up the Up Next list if you don't remember the search/navigation that found the playlist in the first place.

"Heart" actually doesn't function as "remember" as there's no way to see songs in Apple Music (not in your library) that you've previously "loved"[1]. It's supposedly used to help refine recommendations[2].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/3bprla/apple_music_w...

[2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204842

I could be wrong, but I'm not sure how else they'd be showing up in my library under "Recently Added" then. I didn't specifically create any new playlists or anything and it's just the songs I "hearted".

I assumed it was just a "genius" thing at first as well, but there they are. Maybe it's new.

I had thought the "plus" button actually did the adding instead of "heart" which was more algorithm food. But I haven't dug around enough maybe?

There's a history screen. Tap on the player (if it's minimized to the bottom) To the right of the Fast Forward icon, there's a list icon, that opens the history.

That's actually the "Up Next" list I was referring to. Not History.

Scrolling up on that screen reveals history.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/194867

You just made my day. Thanks!

And wow... Discoverability--

You know, that's the problem with programs that have millions of features. You can do lots of things with them, shame their users would never know it.

My hopes are on an Apple Music API. It's just been released for iOS(https://affiliate.itunes.apple.com/resources/documentation/a...) and I'd say it's just a matter of time. With all the frustration out there, music players should become the next hot segment (kinda like RSS readers, then twitter clients, then email clients before).

Spotify has had a public API for years, which never really took off, other than some speakers and lyrics applications. I doubt this is going to do much better.

My gripe with the music app is the super small buttons. I've got a plus size phone, yet this app makes me feel like Shrek trying to fold delicate origami when I want to pause a song.

You pretty much can use it like that, can you not? I just use it like that and then use the tailored playlists for discovering new (and old) music.

One of my favorite UIs

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