Is the new Music app better than iTunes?

[Espri]

I understand your frustration, I have experienced similar

Thanks for the sympathy

It would be interesting to know whether your experience was with the library on an external device and whether you have seen the AMPLibraryAgent using excessive CPU time.

One more major annoyance for me is that with iTunes I usually played my music via my Apple TV (3rd generation), so that I could output over my hifi. That doesn't work any more with Catalina, where the Apple TV (after quite a delay) reports that it cannot connect to the Library (strangely, for a short while after I installed Catalina, it did make the connection, at least when I first did a Restart on the Apple TV). The only way I can play music via the Apple TV now is using Airplay (and that has the subsidiary annoyance that on every new start of the Music app the audio output reverts to about mid loudness and I have to up it in the System Preferences/Sound/Output). I wonder too whether the problem connecting to the library is caused by some timeout related to AMPLibraryAgent's excessive CPU use (though maybe I'm just getting a bee in my bonnet about that ).

 

[akingwithnocrown]

I had some problems with iTunes but I find the Music app MUCH worse. My library (quite large, >32000 songs) is on an external NAS (Network Attached Storage) and maybe this is part of the problem. Since I updated to Catalina I have often given up the app completely and gone back to playing music from my CDs. I have reported problems via the Feedback channel (on 29th March) and have waited/am waiting despairingly for an improved updated version.

I could write pages but here are the two problems that annoy me most:
I seem to spend half my life watching the spinning "beachball". One result of this is that scrolling through the library is rough. Much worse than with iTunes (although it occasionally is OK). My suspicion is that this is somehow related to the AMPLibraryAgent process which I see often running with about 100% CPU usage (and quickly running up hours of CPU time).
Another annoying problem is that virtually every time I start the Music app, it resets the Media file to an address on the internal system disk and I have to Change it to point to my NAS. At least that problem is soon worked around.

Sorry I have written so much but these problems are really bugging me! This is the most frustrating piece of software that I have worked with for a long time.

I completely understand your frustration. I gave up and just started using Retroactive from GitHub, and now I'm using itunes 12.9.5.5 -- which resolved most of my issues. I too have my music stored on an external drive (because I only have 250 GB of SD storage on my macbook pro). The one issue that I still have sometimes is the spinning beach ball. The worst issues were with my album art though -- Apple Music running Catalina completely decimated my artwork organization.

 

[Espri]

Prompted by yet another problem with the Music app -failure to download a track from the iTunes Store- I have spoken a couple of times with Apple Support, about three hours each time. I think we have now (after creating a new Music Library) localised my problem to being associated with my having the library on an external NAS (although I suppose the trouble could also be due to the size of my actual library, >32000 tracks). However, no solution yet but I am scheduled to have another chat with Support on Wednesday. I'm still hoping we will make progress.

 

[dickie001x]

Hmm okay. So I should just stay with HS or upgrade to Mojave.

Mojave - and stay there! Mojave is a little bit more responsive for me compared to HS as APFS was still new then, but seems more refined in Mojave.

 

[mj_]

No issues with Music here at all whatsoever. Granted, I don't have a huge music library (~5,500 songs), I couldn't care less for Apple Music (Spotify is so much better it's like comparing apples and rotten poisoned oranges on fire on the back of a dumpster truck going down a cliff into an active volcano), and I don't purchase music any longer. Honestly, I don't even remember when I last purchased an album.

Basically, I use it Music manage my aging music collection of yore and it does the job just fine for me.

 

[iMacDragon]

Edit: ignore. I was thinking of the podcasts app.

 

[mj_]

@iMacDragon That's not true, you can still choose to organize your music folder yourself:

 

[iMacDragon]

@iMacDragon That's not true, you can still choose to organize your music folder yourself:

View attachment 922754

Yeah, as I edited, I realised I was thinking of the podcast's app reorganisation not Music app's.

 

[hey_augie]

I don't even remember exactly which OS X version and iTunes I had on my previous MBP (early 2010) but that was easy to use and worked well when putting music - which I already owned - on to my iPhone or iPad. Process was easy and always the same. For years I just relied on streaming apps on my phones. Now that I got a new MBA I figured hey why not start rebuilding parts of my library and storing some local music on my devices. Easy enough right?!? NOPE new app sucks.... I wish I had a less crude word to use but I don't. I downloaded three mp3 file from the same location (legal). Two I was able to add no problem. One I had to trick into a playlist to be able to add it. Keep in mind I refuse to auto fill and will only ever manually fill it. I tried both via music and the new finder setup. Ended up getting them on there but it should be super easy not a huge pain in the behind.

/rant