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iOS 18 Apple Music App to Get Smarter Song Transitions
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The auto crossfade on the Android version doesn't use a set time for the crossfade - it intelligently works out how much time to crossfade based on the end of the song. I thought this post was about the same feature, but it seems to describe the same iOS functionality we have now?
Unrelated question, but what was iTunes called before apple bought it in the 90’s? Was it SoundJam? Imagine how fast and responsive that app would be on todays hardware without the buggy, slow, horrible UX, iTunes skin
Ever since I learned that some albums have songs that transition into the next song seamlessly, I turned off crossfade, probably 14 years ago or so.
From my experience, you don't need to do this. I have crossfade turned on, and when tracks that actually transition into one another on the albums are played, there is no crossfade.
I'll use "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd as an example, since it's a very popular album that a lot of people have. Many of the tracks famously go from one to the next as a continuous work. Play track 1 and listen at the end - when it transitions to track 2 there is no crossfade.
Likewise, on U2's "Boy" album, two songs play as one. Tracks 3 and 4 (An Cat Dubh & Into The Heart - it's basically one song that they even play one into the other when they perform live) play together seamlessly as they are supposed to, with no lost music due to a crossfade.
Try it and see, you shouldn't lose any music in a case like you describe.
What was your experience with transitioning your music library to Swinsian? Apple has been making a dumpster fire of Music (formerly iTunes) for years and I'm desperate to replace it, but I have so much music and I don't want to recreate alllll those playlists and re-import all those files.
I’m completely blown away by all the things AI can do for (to?) us: Smart song transitions, OMG. Will my unintelligent iP 14 Pro be able to handle all the required AI processing or will I have to stick to crappy standard transitions under iOS 18? Important 1st world questions!
It seems indeed Apple is scrambling to put some basic AI stuff just about anywhere they can.
But actually they already claimed once to put “smarts” in a lot of places. Under the Siri umbrella. To create calendar events, detect flights, identify habits and patterns, … but in reality it didn’t amount to anything useful.
Wow, a fade settings option. I hope, if they release it, they don't call it "smart". "Smart" evoces mire sophisticated things like: Don't fade when it's an audio play or an album where there's already no gap between songs. Having me chose a preset and thus inevitable often wrong length between two songs seems rather dumb.
This article is so wrong.
Crossfade is already here in current macOS14/iOS17 which enables customisable crossfade duration up to 12 seconds. (screenshot from my Mac macOS14.5)
View attachment 2381169
Now, the rumour is that upcoming macOS15/iOS18 takes it further by introducing "Smart" song transition, but still allow manual setting of 1-12 seconds crossfade. (screenshot from AppleInsider)
View attachment 2381170
Crossfade is already here in current macOS14/iOS17 which enables customisable crossfade duration up to 12 seconds. (screenshot from my Mac macOS14.5)
View attachment 2381169
Now, the rumour is that upcoming macOS15/iOS18 takes it further by introducing "Smart" song transition, but still allow manual setting of 1-12 seconds crossfade. (screenshot from AppleInsider)
View attachment 2381170
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Let’s face it, in the AI age terms like “smart” or “intelligent” are getting abused from all directions - so pretty much anything that is trained-algorithm based qualifies as “smart”/“intelligent” now. And Apple is riding the hype train.
Apple keeps adding tidbits like this, but apple music itself is creaky, has too much white space, feels too much like a non-interactive 'web view' of music.
They need to bring back the feel of it being your own personal music collection; beautifully curated.
They need to really push hard with music discovery, not just the latest throwaway crap that Zane Lowe wants us to listen to , but something which acts as a catalogue, a library of all music released for the past 100 years.
Apple Music has millions of songs. They could do so much with this service.
Why doesn't it have the whole history of album and singles charts, for each country, with a beautifully timeline and search facility?
They need to bring back the feel of it being your own personal music collection; beautifully curated.
They need to really push hard with music discovery, not just the latest throwaway crap that Zane Lowe wants us to listen to , but something which acts as a catalogue, a library of all music released for the past 100 years.
Apple Music has millions of songs. They could do so much with this service.
Why doesn't it have the whole history of album and singles charts, for each country, with a beautifully timeline and search facility?
I just want AM to be faster - Spotify is so much faster to load songs/playlists/do searches.
Transitions are the least of Apple Music’s worries. If it weren’t for Apple One, I would return to Spotify with wild joy. There, I felt that it was a service about music. I would spend hours sometimes musically surfing, discovering unknown artists. In Apple, discovering is unintuitive, because the whole service is like that. I don’t have the ability to simply go to an artist or album from a playlist. I have to perform several strange steps to accomplish this, and none seems to be in place.
The icing on the cake, however, is the lack of something akin to Spotify Connect. Such a huge company as Apple, having a full ecosystem tied together by a single AppleID, should have introduced it ages ago. I have the whole ecosystem under one ID, and for playback, I use an old iPad 6th generation (because of the jack socket). If I launch Apple Music on my phone, it should at least ask me if I want to manage playback on another device, instead of offering me a higher and unnecessary family plan. Absurd.
The icing on the cake, however, is the lack of something akin to Spotify Connect. Such a huge company as Apple, having a full ecosystem tied together by a single AppleID, should have introduced it ages ago. I have the whole ecosystem under one ID, and for playback, I use an old iPad 6th generation (because of the jack socket). If I launch Apple Music on my phone, it should at least ask me if I want to manage playback on another device, instead of offering me a higher and unnecessary family plan. Absurd.
Highjacking the topic a bit here, but I swear when I shuffle my playlists some songs play way more often than others. It drives me crazy.
No app does cross fade the way I want it. They all start fading out the current song and fading in the next one, creating a fade overlap.
I want a more radio-style, where the next song just starts cold, no fade in, during the proper fade out of the previous one (or the fade out gets accelerated when the next track starts). I don’t want a mix, or a beat mix. If this does that, I’ll be happy.
I want a more radio-style, where the next song just starts cold, no fade in, during the proper fade out of the previous one (or the fade out gets accelerated when the next track starts). I don’t want a mix, or a beat mix. If this does that, I’ll be happy.
No issues with the Library. Smart playlist rules did not transfer, just the songs currently in the playlist so had to recreate those using Swinsian's rules. Developer provides a generous 30 day trial. Good Luck.
Have they implemented ReplayGain yet? That’s really the only thing keeping me off Swinsian.