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Apple Music on iOS 17 Introduces Crossfade, Collaborative Playlists, and New Music Player
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So somebody at Apple opened an old version of iTunes and was like, "oops, we forgot to put crossfades in the Music app." 😄
look up Ice Spice’s …Like? EP, that shows exactly what your talking about!
How about a MANUAL EQUALIZER function ?, another 17 years perhaps......
gapless playback still works as intended. i listen to Beyoncé’s album Renaissance which all the songs have gapless playback and it still plays the same as before.
while i agree, I'm curious to know how many people are connecting high-fidelity headphones to their iPhones. The vast majority of people are likely using bluetooth, airpods, or earpods
Sure, maybe the majority of people don’t bother to squeeze every last drop of quality out of their listening, but I don’t see this as a related issue. Clearly apple doesn’t see this as an issue either or they wouldn’t offer lossless/hi-res themselves.
The problem is being blocked from listening to your own music, with files you have ownership/control over, locally stored on the device you paid for. But apple can’t charge you for that every month now can they
Are they insane?! This will not be allowed in my car under any circumstance.
Why are they avoiding improving the player in terms of usability? Why can't we get a like button on the player itself. Why can't we do more with the playlists then the current limitations. These are basic things people ask for and Apple just ignores the service almost entirely. Not only that, but they raise the price of the service but don't offer improvements to it. I use AM because it's probably the nicest user interface in terms of organizing the library (And I've been using Itunes and it's features for close to 20 years) but why can't we have a better, more improved product that keeps improving and refining every year?
It's wild that crossfade has been available for the Android app for a very long time now. At this point crossfade should customizable to any given playlist.
There is a lot of Music app functionality that was lost when Apple decided not to focus on locally stored music anymore. Everything after the major iOS 7 redesign was terrible imo.
They had to create a tiny 5 nanometer DJ that lives inside your phone. Very tricky!
It’s really sad. Who remembers the January 2007 “3 devices” presentation? iPod-like functionality was a core pillar of everything the iPhone was supposed to be.
I’d expected things to improve since June 2007, but not only has this functionality become neglected over time - they’ve actively removed features or otherwise made it worse, all to push people towards their newer products and services. There are really simple things they could have done to keep the iPhone as a viable iPod replacement into the modern age… as it exists, an antiquated iPod is still a superior device to load music onto. Really shouldn’t be that way, but here we are. Innovation and courage.
Could you expand on this bit more? I might be missing what specifically you're referring to because I still sync music to my iPhone (using a 13 pro and my Mac is on the latest OS). They're not FLAC files on the phone, but all my music is purchased and either downloaded from 3rd party sites (originally in WAV or 16-bit FLAC) and converted to the lossless .m4a format, which works on iPhone.
(Obviously this is silly to admit because of my previous comment with how more people are likely using bluetooth solutions but for context - before the car I have now, I used to play my music through wired CarPlay which was better for higher-quality audio files. My current car sadly has wireless CarPlay. I also still listen on my mac with a DAC / amp combo.)
Editing to add: I do admit though that Apple has a lot of work to do in the space of on-device music and the Apple music service. if i want my music to exist on my phone, it seems that I'm unable to do anything apple music related aside from just playing music.
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FLAC is currently the market standard for lossless audio, or what is most widely adopted by people who are building and maintaining their own digital music libraries, and the services providing music in lossless formats.
Apple for some reason refuses to support FLAC files. While converting to ALAC “works”, (it was initially designed by Apple as a proprietary competitor to FLAC, and has since been open sourced yet remains functionally stagnant) there are a number of technical reasons that would not be a desirable move, which could be a dealbreaker for many.
I still have yet to see any compelling reasons why Apple shouldn’t simply just support FLAC files, but as it sits, Apple deliberately blocks you from adding them to your library. No other current music software or hardware audio player has this issue, and it appears to be an entirely arbitrary decision on Apple’s behalf.
Apple even officially claims to “support” FLAC according to the iPhone’s published specifications - as in, sure, iOS can decode and play the files… they just won’t let you load the files into your music library in the first place, so this “support” is rather meaningless.
It would be as if Apple blocked you from using MP3, JPEG, PNG, .PDF or any other commonly used file format in place of their own. It’s pretty blatant anti-consumer behavior as far as I’m concerned.
Collaborative playlists will make my life easier - my son’s often hear a track when we are out and about and ask for it to be added to their playlists, but that has to be done on their iPads at home. So I usually need to send a message with a link to the track, so it can be added later. This way my wife or I will just be able to add it for them from our devices.
I am massively disappointed that there’s no proper update to Music for another year. I feel like music obsessives are completely overlooked by streaming apps, and I was hoping that Apple would be the ones to step in.
Streaming is amazing, and having instant access to so much music really is a miracle. However with this the personal experience surrounding music has been vastly diminished.
Consider that back in the day you would purchase music from a huge choice of stores each with their own unique atmosphere and focus. When travelling you might head into the local store just to experience it. You would organise your music collection however you saw fit, perhaps pulling out a pile of albums for the week or rearranging everything to rediscover old favourites. Then you would listen on a variety of devices each with a unique interface and character.
Now the vast majority of us use one of just two apps to discover music, both of which are very sanitised so as to appeal to the widest range of people (ie the mainstream) with design choices that encourage users toward curated playlists. The options for arranging our collections are limited, instead of being able to place our music how we like we rely on scrolling down lists which are clunky to manage. Our interface is a featureless flat screen where the controls are always in the same place.
I don’t wanna go back to the past, I now have access to more music than I ever dreamed I would and it’s truly amazing. I just wish that the experience of interacting with my music didn’t have to be so impersonal cold and corporate, and I wish that the people who are in a position to do something about this would actually DO SOMETHING about it.
Streaming is amazing, and having instant access to so much music really is a miracle. However with this the personal experience surrounding music has been vastly diminished.
Consider that back in the day you would purchase music from a huge choice of stores each with their own unique atmosphere and focus. When travelling you might head into the local store just to experience it. You would organise your music collection however you saw fit, perhaps pulling out a pile of albums for the week or rearranging everything to rediscover old favourites. Then you would listen on a variety of devices each with a unique interface and character.
Now the vast majority of us use one of just two apps to discover music, both of which are very sanitised so as to appeal to the widest range of people (ie the mainstream) with design choices that encourage users toward curated playlists. The options for arranging our collections are limited, instead of being able to place our music how we like we rely on scrolling down lists which are clunky to manage. Our interface is a featureless flat screen where the controls are always in the same place.
I don’t wanna go back to the past, I now have access to more music than I ever dreamed I would and it’s truly amazing. I just wish that the experience of interacting with my music didn’t have to be so impersonal cold and corporate, and I wish that the people who are in a position to do something about this would actually DO SOMETHING about it.
Finallllyyyy Crossfade. I just hope that the feature works with lossless / spatial audio tracks, which I assume it would be. Because rn, crossfade is not yet at least, supported with lossless / spatial audio tracks, on a Mac, with the latest release of Ventura, which is odd, even when the songs are downloaded directly into the music app.
