Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare | Hacker News Reader

Apple Music Is a Usability Nightmare

cezarywojcik.com

50 pointscezarywojcik47 comments

The criticisms here are 100% fair… But it's worth remembering that Spotify's fundamental unit is the user playlist. It's what the social experience is built around, it's what the user's experience is built around, it's what the consumption experience is built around.

Apple Music, on the other hand, has a pretty strong bent towards curation and suggestion. It's clearly oriented to encourage you to use the curated playlists that Apple Music's folks are creating, and other suggestions based on your tastes. It's also pretty good IMO at providing suggestions based on the music you're currently looking at so you can keep investigating.

I get the feeling the playlist functionality in iTunes 12.2 and the latest iOS is mostly the exact same as it was in previous versions—I don't think it's been integrated into Apple Music at all (yet?). Right now it's just a way of organizing things that are part of your music, rather than a way of organizing things that are part of Apple Music.

So, while it's perfectly fair to be frustrated with the playlist creation experience, I think it's also worth appreciating the fact that Apple stayed true to what they've been saying and marketing around Apple Music. Those user experiences are, at least for me, very straightforward and have generally been quite good. So maybe generalizing and saying “Apple Music is a Usability Nightmare” is overstating a tad… Even though saying “Apple Music's Playlist Story is a Usability Nightmare” maybe isn't.

> But it's worth remembering that Spotify's fundamental unit is the user playlist

I don't think that is true.

My interaction with Spotify is much more about listening to an artist or song and using 'more like this'. And the fundamental unit of sharing is 'friend x listened to this song'. If I know I like their tastes I tend to list to that song then, if I like it, listen to 'more like this'.

I spent about an hour earlier trying to use Apple Music via iTunes and left incredibly frustrated. I couldn't make it do anything I actually wanted it to do.

As a simple example, go to 'new' then, pick a genre from the incredibly awkwardly placed drop down, scroll down and you see 'top songs'. Cool, I thought, lets play the top songs from this genre! Except, as near as I can tell, there is actually no way to play those songs as a 'playlist'. You can click one at a time, and they play, but after each finishes it just stops.

Weird for me it seems exactly right. I tend to share and follow playlists not individual songs.

Also I have had no issue getting Apple Music to work the way I want including what you were trying to achieve. I just clicked on Top Songs and it opened as a playlist where after the first song finished it played the next one. Maybe you were clicking the indvidiual songs ?

Played around with Apple Music a bit this morning. It has promise, but despite the hyperbolic title (wish people would stop that!!) I agree that it's a little bit of a mess. I think the problem comes with smooshing the iTunes Music Store and the Music app together. Suddenly, the interface I'm used to is relegated to just a single tab to the right of four others that I only have a passing interest in. Also, some of my favorite artists that I routinely listen to on Spotify have gaps in their catalogues (Tipper).

Say what you will about Spotify, but their native iOS app is really top-notch. I keep finding little details that make my user experience so much more delightful. For example, I recently learned that you could swipe left and right on the "now playing" bar on the bottom to move between songs. It feels really organic and I wish other players would adopt it. I also just found out that you can swipe right on songs to queue them up for playback, and now I use it all the time. Dunno WTF happened with their desktop client, though.

Oh, and now that I've learned that you can (secretly) search Spotify by genre ('genre:"progressive metal"') and see the top tracks, my life (and music discovery) have been much improved. I also routinely bulk-add the top tracks from artists I'm investigating to get a feel for their music. Don't see a way to do either in Apple Music.

I used Apple Music a lot today - I didn't really find anything majorly off-putting about the UI. There were a few quirks which I'll let Apple off the hook for, seeing as they haven't dramatically changed their Music app in 9 years (unless you're counting the flattening that came with iOS 7.)

To say Apple Music is a "usability nightmare" is a HUGE stretch IMO. If I opened the app and was presented with 1000 different options along with every single interface guideline being ignored, sure, maybe that would be a "nightmare".

I think what you mean to say is "Apple Music isn't close enough to perfect yet, from a usability standpoint."

Agreed. A nightmare would be if it were difficult for the typical person to figure out how to get it to work. For that, things like gdb or git would be fine examples.

"Apple Music's playlists have some bugs and usability issues" new title sadly less sensational.

Frankly I hate that spotify is so built around playlists. I have never made a playlist in my entire life and don't plan to. It's a great tool for making a list of songs for a party or maybe a road trip. Maybe a parent wants to get a kids favorite songs for a car ride to school. Things like that are of great use.

But overall why do we need a playlist to add songs to a library. I have so many gigs of music on my desktop. When I pay for a music subscription I want to replicate that.

Trying to do that in spotify is a disaster. Not only does the interface both web and fat client become slow and cluttered but you don't get a hierarchical view.

I went back to just following artists on spotify. Then when I want to listen to an album I just go through the semi hierarchy. I tend to listen to full albums not songs.

The fact that you can't save an entire artist on spotify says everything.

I really like Google Play music but google doesn't give it the care spotify does. Google takes the stance that their algorithms can solve every problem and spotify knows humans need to be there to fix some issues. One common issue I saw on Google Play Music was albums belonging to artists of the same or very similar names being listed on each other pages. The worst part is google gives users no way to alert them.

I truly hope apple shakes things up.

Spotify isn't much better. I think its designed so that I crash my car while navigating through a complex maze of menus with something that should only take a single click. (For example just try to "Star" a song. Its like 6 clicks)

At least with Apple Music you can tell Siri to play X song while driving. With Spotify indeed you had to navigate through a maze of menus and there are many of us doing or were doing this while driving.

Siri's success rate when asking her to play X song or artist is pretty solid.

I thought he was exaggerating about iTunes, but I went to try to use the menus and they are horrific. They don't act like desktop menus at all. And you can't select and then drag and drop the songs, like you can in the normal iTunes screens. It's gratuitously different in every way.

The only small consolation is that I don't use playlists, so it doesn't really affect me. But, ooof—it's quite the bad UI.

Rdio is the only one of these things doing it right and they seem to be doing it by accident.

The trick is to follow people you don't know on Rdio, find a weird album you like, see who listened to it and if they have good taste in music follow them. Then see who they're following, etc etc. Forget about playlists just focus on albums. Try not to follow people you know personally and be ruthless in unfollowing people because it only takes one Drake fan to pollute your Trending page.

But yes Apple Music is horrible. It's the first time I've gotten the sense that Apple really doesn't know what they're doing and that's a scary thought.

It's truly bizarro world if you think the Spotify UI is good.

Exactly my thoughts and pretty much the only reason I use Rdio instead.

"Apple Music sucks for creating playlists" doesn't mean "Apple Music is a usability nightmare."

The entire industry is aware of the fact that user-generated playlists don't actually work to achieve mega-scale consumption. If they did, Spotify would be at 200m global subscribers and we would all pay for enhanced playlist features. People don't actually know what they want to listen to, and they don't want to spend time on curation -- not even on time curating their curators.

Spotify was built on the false premise that people wanted a "social jukebox" and that this "social stickiness" would somehow create an experience that, when combined with licenses to every track possible, would create an experience superior to pirated channels. Look, they'd say -- you can now see what your friends are listening to, and enjoy unparalleled social discovery! Better still, you can simply subscribe to their playlists and ride off their cool vibes!

The vast majority of people just don't care about this stuff, and definitely not enough to pay for it. They want to press play and skip stuff. And that's about it. The Pandora UI is the UI to beat. Everyone in the business knows this -- hence why you see everyone pushing radio metaphors over playlists.

If you're judging Apple Music on the basis of its playlist UI, you're an edge-case user judging edge-case features. Time to reflect on the fact that you aren't the target audience.

Sources for these claims on what the vast majority of people want?

Either way this is a terrible excuse. It implies that you necessarily have to sacrifice good list support in order to promote discovery and other features. They are not mutually exclusive. As a consumer I don't think it's too much to expect a good playlist UI in a major product like this, especially coming from a company that prides itself in delivering good user interaction.

I don't use or care about Apple Music. But had to upvote for Opeth in the screenshots.

Apple, please fix the horrid UI/UX for creating a playlist. It's not easy to figure out and heck I just want to tell Siri add this to X playlist. That would be the easiest and quickest way to create a playlist. As of now creating a playlist is so confusing and frustrating!!!

Kind of a shame. I use itunes mac daily and I feel they've really did a great job with the UI. It has a little learning curve. I have a lot of songs and making/ adding to my current playlist is pretty easy and powerful.

music for ios is another story...

Hopefully this 1.0 and they'll improve.

I don't think the problem is the usability, the problem is that they don't propose anything new. I remember Steve Jobs saying something like we should not copy others but we have to do things different. With Apple Music, they just try to copy existing services. For example, iMap was a failure but at least they tried to propose something different from the competition. Not with Apple Music.

Meh, this is a bit overly dramatic. I've played around with the interface briefly and really didn't find it that bad.

I don't think I'll ever be interested in radio or "music discovery" services, but I'm already a huge fan of the Apple Music app update, because it finally adds the "play next" and "up next" feature that has been conspicuously absent for so long.

I hate to be the person who nitpicks, but

> I turned on the Beats1 station to see if it was any good, heard some rap "music", and then very very quickly turned that station off.

It's OK not to personally like specific genres, but please don't go as far as to dismiss those you don't like as not being "music".

My bad - I removed the quotes. I was just feeling annoyed over the course of using Apple Music.

Not sure what you were expecting though? I mean, it's a radio station. They're going to play all sorts of music. Today was the first time The Chronic by Dr. Dre has been streamable and so they played it on Beats 1 (the whole album I think?) - but that came after they were playing indie/alternative music for an hour. Perhaps you tuned in at the wrong time.

Especially a radio station called Beats.

No, it is perfectly acceptable to use hyperbole. Anyone who says differently should be shot. If you like rap music, you are stupid, and your parents are stupid.

Criticizing music in a post about music preferences is not unreasonable. Thicken your skin.

...but it's not a post about music preferences, it's a post about software usability.

Software usability of what? Music preferences software.

I get mine muddled, is this a fallacy of composition or texas sharpshooter?

Did you want a reply, or the catharsis of getting downvoted from "stupid" users who like rap?

I want an argument about how often I am seeing people being offended by having their preferences criticized. I can take somebody disagreeing with me (except on this issue, of course :) ), and civil society relies on criticism, and people accepting criticism. Berating people because they are dismissive of things they don't like is a path that lies madness. Feedback should not be purely positive, truncating the negative, because then effects that are polarizing or simply have costly disadvantages outcompete effects that do are more mildly positive, but without (or fewer) drawbacks.

Saying that rap is not music may be criticism. But it is certainly ignorant and unconstructive criticism. It is criticism in the same sense that "your mom" jokes are.

Right, there's disagreement to teach or learn about another's opinion, but you're engaged in something more indulgent.

I don't believe you're interested in the merits of civil discourse, no, you just enjoy the declaration of your opinion.

"Feedback should not be purely positive," right, it should at least be constructive.

I see what you did there

I was sort of hoping to read a usability analysis of the site from someone more experienced than me.

Mac OS X at first had a music folder icon in the finder window sidebar, also all macs came with optical drives.

That icon was removed several years ago. You can enable it but its not there by default. Most macs dont have optical drives anymore.

My mac and my ipad are constantly griping that they cannot reach the itunes store. thats because i often have no internet connection. im more productive that way, see.

Enriching the corporation is not what music is for. I can earn some goodmoney as a coder but to be honest I find playing piano for tips to be a far mor satisfying experience.

beta software is beta?

Its fine, software development is not easy. I am sure they are going to fix the rough edges sooner than you think.

(also beats1 is great)

"So I tried Apple Music for half a day and dismissed it out of hand" paraphrasing. Cool bro, glad you gave it chance. Glad you're making headlines.

This is basically clickbait designed to capitalize on the new service.

With zero observation of what people want and how they experience it, he conducts a dry and pedantic assassination of the UI.

I've talked to 4 regular users today all of whom were having an enjoyable experience and expressing no concern about the UI - instead the conversation was all about what it was allowing people to discover and listen to.

The only person who had any discomfort with the service was a friend who hasn't used streaming before and was concerned about the ephemeral nature of what he listened to - I.e. Unlike with buying musing it's easy to listen to a lot of stuff and not make a connection with it to a particular place and time.

In any case unless you like pedantry, don't read this article - instead listen to some music.

Your comment would be more useful if you actually addressed the "pedantic" things. Have you even read the post?

- Can't delete multiple items or move multiple items to another list

- "three dots" AND right click shows different contextual menus

- 4 clicks to delete items from the "My music" menu.

While I don't think the article is especially balanced, these items are far from pedantic.

They are pedantic if they don't affect usability significantly, and to determine that one needs to know whether users are impacted - not whether they conform to a principle.

It is not a usability analysis, it’s an experience report.

My only quibble is the title. If he personalized it (“My Apple Music Nightmare”), I would be 100% satisfied.

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