Redesigning Apple Music after Being Rejected
medium.com
medium.com
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.
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).
I never would have tried a subscription service until my digital music player became so bad that subscriptions were better than my carefully curated library.
To Apple Music, I say never again.
This seems to happen to me, even though I don't stream any music.
I also feel the UI could be simplified further by burying the concept of "downloading" somewhat akin to how iCloud Photo Library does it. It should just aim to handle 95% of cases via intelligent caching, like cache all your latest stuff and anything you recently put into a playlist. I know we on HN tend to be advanced users who love manual control but we could still do it via playlists. Get those download buttons out of the way for most folks.
I find discovery to be pretty good! The "My New Music Mix" is surprisingly decent for me. That is entirely track-based and it's probably my main way of discovering completely new music. I used to hate For You because it felt like browsing the 99 cent rental section of Blockbuster.. lots of old stuff that was maybe good, but I'm mainly interested in new music. But the New Music mix has changed my feeling.
It's meant to just work like 'magic' - as if all wireless connections as well as the server and client software are nowadays so perfect that you'd never encounter error states anymore, and it's all so fast that you don't need progress information on anything. Right.
Strongly disagree. It’s probably a generational thing but I listen to music in albums, not in popular hits. This was by far the main reason I used to use Rdio instead of Spotify.
EDIT: Discovery is terrible, the only sites that had excellent discovery was last.fm (butchered by CBS) and what.cd (nuked by law enforcement)
As for the UI, I loved the Google Music one... when I was on Android. Now that I'm on iOS it's totally alien and just unusable because zero iOS conventions are respected, like I'm in a virtual machine, it's just frustrating. I find all of the other music platform UIs quite awkward and despite its flaws Apple Music is still the best for me.
Seems like we hit a wall and "all MUAs suck" just changed the M from "Mail" to "Music".
"My New Music Mix" is updated 1x week for some inexplicable reason (I know Spotify does this too), while it seems to recommend albums programmatically based on likes/listening habits. Other playlists seem to be manually curated and recommended based on genre.
Understandably, there is just no way to expect manually curated playlists to cover everyone's personal tastes.
I believe it is possible to recommend songs/artists/albums without favoring one form of discoverability over the other as it is currently done.
But what _really_ broke my music-listening back was Apple, in their "infinite" wisdom have been rating songs for me they think I'd like in my library (grey stars). As far as I can tell, there is no way for me to distinguish between my stars and the stars Apple adds, which means my playlist of songs that I've rated has now been ruined by Apple's "recommendation."
edit And, I want to be absolutely clear here - there are songs I'VE uploaded into Apple Music using iTunes music match sync whatever. Apple thinks they can tell me more about my music library, that I've purchased and cultivated over all these years, then I can.
For anyone interested, I am using: Very large NAS to store my music. Tagging music using Musicbrainz Picard. Multiple Kodi (formerly XBMC) front ends, all sharing the same music and video library via mysql.
A quick Google would have explained this for you. They are not 'rating your tracks'. With Apple Music you can 'love' tracks which then show a red heart next to them. The grey stars are shown next to tracks that are the most popular with all Apple Music users. So if you view an album, generally, the singles will have grey star next to them. Really useful when they recommend a new album and you want to listen to the best tracks before digging deeper.
I am not going to go through all my albums and manually remove what Apple has screwed up. I'd rather migrate away to a system I 100% control.
It'd be one thing if I didn't literally own this album as much as one can legally own something digital, but my goodness this seems unjustifiable.
I bought the beatles set before they were on spotify (huge mistake since they're not separated by actual album) and it was impossible to download the songs except for downloading each one individually.
Downloading by artist or album never worked.
I hear you don't have CarPlay!
But the Podcast app, oh boy! This is an app that I actually use, and it's still incredibly confusing to me. Probably will be an enigma forever.
Digital music was one of the first usage of mass multimedia, at the end of the 90s. It is sad that the whole thing is still so clunky 20y later.
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).
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.
The process of adding and synchronizing your local music is not the easiest and most intuitive, but it's possible.
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.
a) Pick an artist and listen to "<Artist> Radio", which will quickly compile a playlist of music by and similar to that artist.
b) Sample some "Stations", which are usually themed around a genre, mood, or activity.
As I'm listening to the above, I'll Thumbs Up songs I like, which adds them to my library for more frequent listening later, and helps me to "bookmark" a new artist to browse the rest of their songs later if I want.
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.
Lately I've been using 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.
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.
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.
__
Thanks parent!
Thanks.
A curated playlist (not discover weekly or release radar for example) is editorially curated and driven by a human. Doesn't involve an AI for now.
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.
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!!!
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?
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.
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?
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.
If I'm listening to a radio station when I shut off my bluetooth device I want it to start playing again as soon as I connect to that device again (or open the app via a voice command).
I don't want to touch my phone and I don't have any car specific hardware.
No joke, Apple Music also insists on playing me a mix of Tegan and Sara, Eminem, Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos, and the comedy of David Cross, and nothing else.
Say I start my car and open the BT connection. My iPhone auto-plays music from Apple Music. Then I switch to AM radio, the iPhone pauses. Then I switch back to Bluetooth, and my iPhone starts playing again from where it paused.
Apple Music definitely has problems, but I haven't had this one myself.
I'll say to shuffle some music from a band containing "Theory" in its name. Siri gets everything right except replaces "Theory" with "Siri" and then starts playing something completely different!
Shouldn't Siri + Apple Music look at my own library first to find close matches to a spoken query before going off and playing something I've never listened to before that isn't even in the genres I listen to most?
It's pretty horrific UX, to me at least.
It's so painful to scrub the music playback since they make the controls so small and annoying.
I love old iPods with buttons since I don't have to look at the damn thing to change the song.
Now I hate that everything is a soulless touch screen that makes everything take so long.
Also, iTunes is so bloated. Wish Apple just had a stand alone music player that only has a single responsibility: play the damn music!!
As far as recommendation have you tried MacPaw's Listen app?
It tries to be what I recommended in terms of UX. The only caveat is that sometimes it occasionally crashes, but by and large, it works. However, I don't know if it can connect to Apple Music's streaming service. It works for music copied over to your iPhone / iPod.
I just wish I didn't to use a 3rd party app for something so basic, which Apple at one point had perfected, and then just muddied up over time.
Alternatively, have you tried using the Now Playing interface (part of Control Center) to play/pause/scrub/skip?
Even though it only takes a moment for my brain to register that it's the wrong screen, it still flusters me and isn't something I want to deal with when driving.
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.
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.
As for the matching, I'm not sure what to tell you. To the best of my knowledge, all of the music I have was matched correctly (or uploaded if there was no match). That said, I was originally an iTunes Match subscriber, and it's certainly possible that maybe iTunes Match used stricter matching, though I don't know why that would be because that sounds weird.
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.
This strikes me as being extremely, invasively creepy -- although I can appreciate that some people might find this cool.
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.