Thoughts on the new Music app

[kerrikins]

Is it possible for someone to take a few screenshots of the For You section? I've been trying to see what it looks like, since apparently Apple has gotten rid of most of the recommendations, but I haven't been able to find any photos or videos going in depth about what has changed in For You. The For You tab is a fairly big part of how I discover music, and I'm not going to be happy if Apple crippled it

I don't have a screenshot but I can tell you what I see:

- Wednesday's Playlists - this refreshes every day from what I can see. Gives six playlist choices.
- Heavy Rotation - what you're playing a lot
- Wednesday's Albums - A selection of sixteen different albums, divided into four different categories
- Artist Playlists - a selection of six different playlists
- New Releases For you - a selection of six different albums.

So yeah, very limited in comparison to the old version. I noticed that it is condensing some of it - ie, a single playlist doesn't take up a single row - but the amount of info they have loaded is more limited. In iTunes you can go on for awhile getting new content.

Now, Browse has an Album at the top, and then 'New Music', then 'Curated Playlists', 'Top Charts' and then Genres. Maybe they intend more discovery to be done through this tab or through people finding playlists etc when they search for songs.

 

[Shirasaki]

Question, if you delete the music app is it still possible to add music to your iPhone and say use an app like, Cesium instead?

For this beta it depends.
You can try it out.
For me, Marvis immediately stops working after "uninstalling" music app.

 

[Shirasaki]

I noticed when viewing the track list in albums, the app no longer shows the track number. I hope they add them back. I use the track numbers somewhat frequently to select tracks, and it helps me spot when things are out of order.

Also, the heart option needs to be added back to lock screen and Control Centre. I use that all the time to help organize music and get better recommendations. Apple seems to want to deemphasize the feature.

It shows track number obvious, but maybe only when you explicitly add them at iTunes.
Mine shows track numbers as usual.
About the "love", now you may need to press that three dots to "love" or "dislike".

 

[venividivigor]

The only thing that's terrible are the people who keep taking this version of the Music app in the Developer Preview 1 as if it's a finished and final product over and over again. Then complaining about it.

You sure know a lot about betas dontchu.

Because after all the years I've used betas, hardly anything changes. Just little refinements, it's not even noticeable.

 

[johngordon]

Interesting that a lot of people seem to like it so much - I'm in the not liking it so much camp. Mainly because it seems as though a lot of the functionality seems to have been stripped out. I know they might well add it back in over the subsequent betas, but this doesn't seem quite like what thy did with things like Photos and FCPX that were rebuilt from the ground up.

The screen shot below shows how impractical it is having such big text on a small screen, and the new mini player at the bottom lacks a lot of functionality from the previous version, and just lacked its finesse.

https://imgur.com/a/x0dNx

Having said that, AM in Sierra actually looks much improved. It looks to me as though previously AM on the Mac looked poor because it was largely the iOS version on a big screen. So it all looked a bit squashed rather than make better use of the full screen. Now it looks pretty good I think, with the full screen scrollable columns in the For You and Browse sections. And the big fonts don't look so out of place on a bigger screen.

And this time it looks like the Mac version ported to iOS where the big fonts are just impractical on a smaller screen.

They really need to add in some of the stuff currently removed - things like the ... next to each track in the track list of an album that you could use to add stuff to a playlist or add to playing next etc. I just hope they haven't decided to limit what you can do in response to all the stuff about it being too complicated.

I never really understood what all the fuss was about, and never thought it was that complicated or confusing - but maybe I'm some sort of genius!
[doublepost=1466038911][/doublepost]

I'm missing the 'Show only music on this phone' option, as you said, there's music that I don't care about in my library that I once bought and if it's not made the cut anymore to be on my phone then I don't want to see it. I'm just deleting it all from the list which isn't a pain but something that's not needed.

Isn't that the Downloaded Music tab on the main Library screen?

 

[TigerMSTR]

I don't have a screenshot but I can tell you what I see:

- Wednesday's Playlists - this refreshes every day from what I can see. Gives six playlist choices.
- Heavy Rotation - what you're playing a lot
- Wednesday's Albums - A selection of sixteen different albums, divided into four different categories
- Artist Playlists - a selection of six different playlists
- New Releases For you - a selection of six different albums.

So yeah, very limited in comparison to the old version. I noticed that it is condensing some of it - ie, a single playlist doesn't take up a single row - but the amount of info they have loaded is more limited. In iTunes you can go on for awhile getting new content.

Now, Browse has an Album at the top, and then 'New Music', then 'Curated Playlists', 'Top Charts' and then Genres. Maybe they intend more discovery to be done through this tab or through people finding playlists etc when they search for songs.

Interesting. It looks to be giving fewer recommendations, BUT those recommendations are more organized. I like that, since having too many recommendations with no structure is a little overwhelming in the current version.

I particularly like that they've added 'New Releases For You'. That should me that section won't be recommending albums I've listened to already.

 

[johngordon]

Interesting. It looks to be giving fewer recommendations, BUT those recommendations are more organized. I like that, since having too many recommendations with no structure is a little overwhelming in the current version.

I particularly like that they've added 'New Releases For You'. That should me that section won't be recommending albums I've listened to already.

I have a section called "New releases for...." For what, I have no idea though.

 

[kerrikins]

Interesting. It looks to be giving fewer recommendations, BUT those recommendations are more organized. I like that, since having too many recommendations with no structure is a little overwhelming in the current version.

I particularly like that they've added 'New Releases For You'. That should me that section won't be recommending albums I've listened to already.

I just wish that they'd get rid of the 'Heavy Rotation' section. Like, add a playlist for that if you want in Library, but why take up a section in the 'For You' tab? Make 'For You' entirely about recommendations and add another section for discovery!

Also, apparently there's supposed to be some discovery thing that's new in the app but I haven't seen a sign of that yet.

 

[sidh10]

I like the new music app overall. It is better than the previous app for sure, in terms of usability(at least for me).
However, one thing is missing which is driving me crazy. Previously, you could edit a playlist and add songs to them from the playlist page itself. Now, I have to go to individual songs and add them to playlist. There is no way to add multiple songs to a playlist at once.

 

[TigerMSTR]

Here's a video tour of the new music app. Nothing on For You tab, unfortunately:

The app is looking really great.

 

[zaneliu]

I think what I miss the most is not being able to play playlists and albums immediately from clicking the art. It was way quicker this way to shuffle

 

[jordanearle]

My only major complain is the current Up Next system in it. Seems like they only have the 'Play Next' option and not the option to just add songs to a queue.

You also can't seem to reorder your current up next queue manually. Just shuffle the order.

 

[Shirasaki]

My only major complain is the current Up Next system in it. Seems like they only have the 'Play Next' option and not the option to just add songs to a queue.

You also can't seem to reorder your current up next queue manually. Just shuffle the order.

It has a "play later" which looks like the feature you want, although it does not work anyways for now, and current music app is far from complete you know. Even that simple + shown on WWDC is not included in this beta yet.

 

[jordanearle]

It has a "play later" which looks like the feature you want, although it does not work anyways for now, and current music app is far from complete you know. Even that simple + shown on WWDC is not included in this beta yet.

Oh yeah, Play Later popped up once for me but can't get it working since. Biggest thing for me is the lack of reordering. I like to make custom-temporary playlists for different things so hope they add that back. Presume they will!

 

[Dean0mc]

Can't see any sign of connect in the music app, has Apple got rid of the social sides Or is it just a beta thing?

 

[Suckfest 9001]

Um.. So I just downgraded to iOS 9 because of general broken-ness with iOS 10, and I have to say, I actually prefer the old music app. The new app treats me like either a child or a senior without reading glasses. The font and general size of the elements makes it really hard to navigate the app, and that's on a 6s Plus. The old app in comparison looks human-scale and mature. Yeah it's probably more messy, but at least you can play all songs by an artist, and you don't have to scroll endlessly to get to content that shouldn't be off-screen to begin with.

Apple, stop experimenting with new designs and just pick one design language. The notification system is nice but it clearly looks like it belongs in another OS, and the music app is just flat-out hideous.

 

[Creek0512]

I like the new music app overall. It is better than the previous app for sure, in terms of usability(at least for me).
However, one thing is missing which is driving me crazy. Previously, you could edit a playlist and add songs to them from the playlist page itself. Now, I have to go to individual songs and add them to playlist. There is no way to add multiple songs to a playlist at once.

But now it's much more straight forward. Before you had to navigate to the playlist, enter edit mode, search for song, add song. Now all you do is search for song and add song to a playlist. You can add songs at anytime, you don't have to be in edit mode for that playlist.

 

[cwwilson]

The all white and pink UI is something I'm really not a fan of. I liked it a lot more when the background matched the album art. I do like the card view though, reminds me of the Palm Pre lol.

 

[Deeznuts.]

Music alternative with Apple Music support & iTunes Match support?

 

[RobbyIdol]

Here's a video tour of the new music app. Nothing on For You tab, unfortunately:

The app is looking really great.

This app is the worst Music app Apple has created to date. Not surprising. So much bloatware. An overemphasis on large pictures and font. Very little user customizability. I hope to see some significant UI changes in upcoming betas.

Thank God for Cesium.

 

[StonewallBrown]

This app is the worst Music app Apple has created to date. Not surprising. So much bloatware. An overemphasis on large pictures and font. Very little user customizability. I hope to see some significant UI changes in upcoming betas.

Thank God for Cesium.

While I agree with some points, how does Apple use bloat Ware?

 

[RobbyIdol]

While I agree with some points, how does Apple use bloat Ware?

I'm sure I'm using the term incorrectly, but for me (a non-Apple Music subscriber who just wants a clean Music player), having the app dominated by things like "For You" and "Radio" and the newest redundancy "Browse" is just in the way of setting up the bottom row of icons with things I might actually use. If I want to "Browse" new music, I'll go to the iTunes store app properly or any other of my music finding channels. All those added "features" just feel bloated to me in an app that should just play music you already purchased/downloaded.

 

[onethinline]

Not sure if this was already pointed out, but I remember reading in the release notes for Beta 1 that it's a known issue that Apple Music features don't disappear when Apple Music is disabled. I'd take that to mean that the intention by release is that not having Apple Music will give you more of a dedicated music player without the AM features.

 

[Creek0512]

From Apple's iOS 10 beta 1 Release Notes:

• Turning off Show Apple Music in Music Settings does not yet hide Apple Music.

 

[StonewallBrown]

I'm sure I'm using the term incorrectly, but for me (a non-Apple Music subscriber who just wants a clean Music player), having the app dominated by things like "For You" and "Radio" and the newest redundancy "Browse" is just in the way of setting up the bottom row of icons with things I might actually use. If I want to "Browse" new music, I'll go to the iTunes store app properly or any other of my music finding channels. All those added "features" just feel bloated to me in an app that should just play music you already purchased/downloaded.

That's makes sense. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised to see a toggle added to settings, that would remove most Apple Music things from the Music app. If not by September, then iOS 11.