
iOS 13's Music App Sucks - samstevens
https://samuelstevens.me/writing/ios-13s-music-app-sucks
======
oflannabhra
I have an Apple Music subscription and use Apple Music (the app) daily.

In this article, I hear a lot of "I". IMO, the big challenge with Apple Music
is all the legacy that a) personal libraries, b) iTunes Match, and c) iTunes
purchases all bring to the new streaming paradigm. Those are problems Apple
has to solve, and can't just discard. Apple's customers have plowed tons of
$$$ to "own" their libraries, and Apple is doing the right thing to bring them
along.

That complexity explains the difference between "hearting" a
song/playlist/station and "plus'ing" one, or "clouding" one, amongst others.

I actually appreciate Apple's queue approach, which has a long history in
iTunes. I love being able to insert or reorder songs without having to
"recover" the previous state. That may not be everyone's cup of tea, or mental
model, but it isn't bad design.

I do agree with the author that configurability of the tabs and the main
buttons of the Now Playing screen would be handy. I know of several changes
I'd make if able.

I do think that there are several good criticisms here, but when the first
paragraph includes a lot of "I don't care about"s, that is a good sign to me
that the author is not thinking about the design challenges holistically.

~~~
samstevens
Author here; I agree that I'm not considering other users in my rants. I'm not
a designer, and don't have solutions that would help everyone that Apple is
targeting with this product.

Part of the reason I'm unhappy with the options forced on me is the removal of
my ability to customize the tabs. If Apple wants to push Radio, that's fine.
Do I have to suffer navigational difficulties, when previously I could replace
that button with "Albums" or "Songs", etc.?

With regards to queuing, I don't mind the way it's modeled. I reorder songs
all the time; it's very useful. The actual act of dragging the songs is not
very graceful at times--I'll fly by the next song in the list, or not move at
all past the top of the screen. Like I said, after playing with Spotify and
noticing similar issues, I think it's a Swift/iOS issue, not an Apple Music
problem.

~~~
berdon
You're using an Apple product - Apple is known for their tailored and single-
path UX that they don't simply expect their users to love, they also don't
care when they don't.

I'm not saying your complaints aren't valid or warranted - they're just not
relevant to Apple unless their designers agree with you.

~~~
otterley
Apple does care about customer feedback, but by and large, they're not looking
for it on HN or in random blogs. If you want to reach out to them, you can do
so here: [https://www.apple.com/feedback/](https://www.apple.com/feedback/)

~~~
__m
"We cannot respond to you personally [...] we will contact you directly."

~~~
eitland
Here's what I found:

> we are unable to respond to each submission individually. If you provide
> your email address, you agree that we may contact you to better understand
> the comments you submitted

Which makes perfect sense IMO.

------
Shebanator
As someone who worked on Google Play Music for many years, I'd like to point
out that a lot of the UX criticisms here are really just personal preferences,
and those preferences are based in very large part on the way you listen to
music. Some people are "lean back" listeners who just want to put on a radio
station of music they like and not fiddle with it. Others are expert curators
who have tens of thousands of tracks in their personal collections. Some are
all about their personal custom playlists, and don't care about music
libraries or radio stations at all.

It is pretty much impossible to build a music UX that optimizes for all three
of these user types, since they want such different things. Apple Music,
Spotify, and Google Play Music have all made different choices in how they
address this. Some of those were (IMHO) good choices, others weren't. But it
is dangerous to assume that what works well for you will work well for others.
The discussion about the queue here is a great example: one person hates it
with a passion, another loves it.

~~~
danShumway
> It is pretty much impossible to build a music UX that optimizes for all
> three of these user types

This is a good argument for not tying music subscriptions to a specific client
-- ie, allowing 3rd-party clients that are optimized for my specific user-type
to freely hook into and stream from my Google Play Music subscription via an
official API. The Google Play Music client is _not_ optimized for users like
me. I'm sure it was a lot of work to build, but I am not the target
demographic of any of the interface decisions that have been made, and I curse
the designers every time I open the app.

So it's weird that, say, Shuttle, a music client that _is_ optimized for me as
a user, can't hook into my account or even download my purchased music.

I don't mean to call out Google Music in specific, because while it doesn't
have good public APIs, they're at least consistent enough that alternative
clients are being made on desktop.[0]

But I do see this as a trend across a lot of SaaS services -- Netflix,
Twitter, Facebook, Apple Music. People complain that the services aren't
optimized for them, and designers will roll their eyes and say, "you can't
optimize for everyone".

And that's true. But who's fault is it that you have to optimize for everyone?
Who's fault is it that you have to try and figure out how to balance a bunch
of wildly diverse and often contradictory needs? There used to be really good
alternative Twitter clients, and if Twitter wants to complain _now_ that
building one client for everyone is hard, I just can't muster the energy to
feel sorry for them.

Apple's whole shtick is trying to get everyone to use the same official apps,
to have the same consistent, good experience. I'm not sympathetic to a company
that deliberately puts themselves into that position and then complains,
"optimizing for everyone at the same time is hard."

[0]: [https://github.com/MarshallOfSound/Google-Play-Music-
Desktop...](https://github.com/MarshallOfSound/Google-Play-Music-Desktop-
Player-UNOFFICIAL-)

~~~
Finnucane
You could have different clients for different kinds of users. But then you
would almost certainly have users complaining that they need more than one
client to do what they want.

~~~
danShumway
This would still (often) be strictly better than having those same users
complain that there are no clients that do what they want.

It's also an easily solveable problem if the APIs are actually open. If Apple
put out three music clients, you would definitely get people complaining that
they weren't unified. If Apple shipped an open iOS API that covered everything
in their official client(s), somebody in the community would just build one
client that did everything a complaining demographic wanted, and then sell it
for $4.99 on the app store.

When you see large groups of people complaining about current tech offerings
for sustained periods of time, that usually means that the legal and/or
technical barriers to entry to build alternatives are too high.

~~~
azinman2
Apple does have a public API for Apple Music [1], as does Spotify [2]. In
fact, I frequently use a 3rd party client [3] that's all about curated music
leveraging the Spotify API to stream the tracks.

[1]
[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemusicapi](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemusicapi)

[2] [https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-
api/](https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/)

[3] [https://noonpacific.com](https://noonpacific.com)

~~~
danShumway
I can't speak to Apple (I'm on Android), but I did look into 3rd-party clients
for Spotify at one point and my impression was that the web API only allowed
you to get information about songs, and remote-control the official client.
The advice I saw online was LibSpotify was basically dead and that Spotify was
probably going the same direction as Twitter: more locked down, more onerous
developer TOS, fewer capabilities.

I'd be pretty happy to be wrong about that, since I'm fairly annoyed with
Google Play. At the time, if I had found good enough API support and a good
enough 3rd-party client, I would have switched services.

It's been a while since I looked into it, and maybe I missed something when I
first did. I can see that Spotify is experimenting with a web playback API
now[0], but as far as I can see it's still pretty limited.

[0]: [https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-playback-
sdk...](https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-playback-sdk/)

------
ringzero
Apple Music, and particularly iTunes Match, are the opposite of "just works".
I wanted to switch back from Spotify, but I found that Match had made a
complete mess of my library. Half of my album art gone. Albums were striped
with some tracks that were replaced with the iTunes store versions, and some
left as my uploaded MP3 V0 versions (most obvious because, even with Sound
Check on, the volume levels between each track differ _greatly_ post-iTunes
Match).

I've been able to look past a lot of the decline in Apple's software quality,
but the data corruption problems springing up (Catalina Mail, iOS 13 Photos
incidents also come to mind) are a bridge too far. The primary reason I avoid
turning on a new Apple cloud service is that it's _likely_ it'll do something
highly undesirable to my data.

~~~
dave5104
Are you referring to the standalone $25/year iTunes Match subscription?

As an alternate data point, I've subscribed to that service for years now (no
Apple Music streaming) and have not had any major problems. Lots of custom
music tracks as well, which Match has always respected and synced properly
across my iDevices.

The only problem I had when first signing up years back was that one of my
songs was replaced with the wrong song--but that bad match has since been
fixed.

------
DavideNL
I have both Apple Music and Spotify, and i also dislike Apple's Music app;

First, it deleted ALL my playlists on a random day for no apparent reason, and
i couldn't restore them from backups because apparently the playlists are
stored in the cloud or whatever and not in a local file.

Also, after converting my personal library to "iCloud", Apple replaced all my
specific versions of songs with crappy alternative versions, without notifying
me beforehand. Very frustrating.

Spotify's user interface is so much better, i can't understand how anyone
would prefer Apple Music. Also i much prefer Spotify's radio/recommendations.

~~~
tzs
> Spotify's user interface is so much better, i can't understand how anyone
> would prefer Apple Music.

I've been very unimpressed with Spotify's iOS and iPadOS interface lately. I
was OK with it for years when all I would do is either (1) tell it to play one
of my playlists, or (2) find an album via search and tell it to play that.

Lately, though, I've been using Spotify to listen to music during timed
activities. I know I'm going to spend N minutes on the activity, and want to
queue up N minutes of music. So before starting the activity I go through my
playlists picking songs and queuing them, or thinking of other songs that I'm
the mood for, searching for them, and queuing them, trying to queue a little
over N minutes.

Should be easy, right? From the song listing in a playlist or search, queue
the song and keep a running total in my head of the times. Occasionally pop
over to the queue view to check the total time.

Nope. That doesn't work because the stupid thing does not show the song times
in playlist listing, search listings, or any other kind of listing I've found.
The only way I know to find the length of a song is to start playing it and
then look at the playback display which shows time elapses and time remaining.

Well, that's not quite true. You could also put the song by itself in a
playlist, because it will show you the total length of a playlist.

The partial workaround is to make a new playlist, add the songs to that
instead of the queue so that I can at least see the total time, and then queue
the whole playlist when I've got my N minutes in it.

People have been asking for them to fix this for at least 5 years [1].

[1] [https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Queue-
length-i...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Queue-length-in-
time/idi-p/770047)

~~~
nomel
You could also set an alarm in iOS, using the sleep timer function, to stop
whatever is currently playing [1].

1\. [https://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/08/07/how-to-set-timer-
st...](https://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/08/07/how-to-set-timer-stop-playing-
music-video-movie/)

------
rconti
Don't forget the mundane detail of "I have no idea what Apple did with my 60GB
music library or how to get it on my phone again".

Thankfully I've been a spotify subscriber for years so I can just keep kicking
that can down the road, but some day I'd like my music back.

~~~
nobleach
I had one of those really nice 100GB music libraries that I had been ripping
from CDs since 1998. (and Napster/WinMX/Kazaa/Limewire-ing because... I was
young, stupid and poor) I had meticulously been fixing ID3 tags, and putting
them into the folder structure that made me happy. Then one day, I did a new
Mac setup, and forgot to tick the box that said, "let me manage my library
layout" and BAM. iTunes moved everything around. 10 years of collating, and
sorting, etc, GONE. It's my fault for not backing it up... but wow. I
basically just stopped listening to that library. I now do Spotify.

~~~
72deluxe
Surely that music library is important and cost you money? Why would you give
your money to another service to listen to the same music again, that you
already own?

I ask this because I have about 900 albums on CD that I ripped and then stored
away in the loft/under the stairs and could never envisage actually paying a
streaming service to listen to stuff I actually have already bought.

I mean, I have an iPod Classic that has all this music on it, and my MacBook
too.

It seems odd the general acceptance of streaming services and rent-everything
approach these days. Seems very odd to me (but yes I do have a Netflix
account, just don't rent everything else under the sun - the worst is
Grammarly - why subscribe to a spell check???? Mind blown).

~~~
hombre_fatal
Unless I'm mistaken, they're not talking about some cloud/streaming service,
just exposing their music folder to iTunes.app so that iTunes can give them a
GUI over it (like search/sorting).

Without the checkbox, iTunes employs its own local folder organization
strategy and will update id3 tags and album art from fingerprint lookups.

~~~
nobleach
This is correct. For quite awhile after I ticked that box, and "lost"
everything. (I still had all the files, they were just put together in an
awkward way. I could use iTunes to create playlists that mimicked my
preferences... but that took a lot of time) Once I started using Spotify, it
just made sense. Yes there's a ton of overlap in music that I own (some I
don't "own" as I had snagged it from the napsters of the day) and what I
listen to on Spotify. But, there's also quite a bit more that I never owned...
or is brand new to me.

------
cygned
While I can cope with the UI, what really drives me nuts are actual bugs.
Sometimes, albums are split into two parts. Sometimes, songs are randomly
missing. When downloading music, sometimes it takes forever or just doesn’t
download at all. My most favorite one: when I plug the phone into my car, in
1/2 cases it stops playback (even from another app) and starts playing a
random song. It’s always the same. And it’s a good song. But it is something
different. Imagine you get into your car at 6am listening to a podcast and
suddenly Metallica starts screaming at you.

~~~
jakebasile
That album splitting bug has been around for years and I don't know if they'll
ever fix it. It's particularly infuriating because when you look at one half
the album in your library there's a button to see the whole album in Apple
Music's library, and when you click on it it shows that the entire album is
downloaded anyways. So the system has the information it needs to group them
as one but refuses to do so.

I am not sure but I think it's related to another longstanding issue where a
particular version of a song is replaced with a different version of a song
(usually one from a compilation or best-of album instead of the original
single or EP, etc.)

~~~
cygned
Been there. Some remixed version from a compilation replaced the original.
Constant source of great pleasure.

------
derefr
I feel like Music.app is a pair of similar apps squished together, when they
share no common frontend functionality and work far better apart:

• Apple Music (the subscription service)

• iTunes (the library with syncing and an optional digital music locker
subscription-service)

Each of the two has its own obvious top-level navigation. Each of the two has
its own independent backend services (e.g. the recommendations in Apple Music;
the iTunes Store and the cloud music locker in the iTunes app.) They would
also share some backend services (e.g. the object storage of songs that are
streamed in Apple Music vs. “matched“ in iTunes) but other iOS apps share
these services too (e.g. Apple Podcasts, Apple TV.)

Why are they the same app?

~~~
chipotle_coyote
Well, for one possible answer: I personally don't want "music that I have
added to my library by ripping or buying digital files of" and "music that I
have added to my library by clicking 'favorite' in a streaming music service"
to be separate libraries. "Okay, I want to listen to a song or two from the
most recent album by The Black Keys, so I'll go to _this_ app, but now I'd
like to listen to ELO's Greatest Hits, so I'll go to _that_ app." I just want
to say "I would like to listen to my music."

~~~
derefr
That's nice if you actually subscribe to Apple Music. As it stands, searching
your library in Music.app returns results _from Apple Music_ , with ~3 extra
taps required to see the results from your own library, and often the
inability to even navigate to a result in your own library if it matches the
name of a title that's been delicensed from Apple Music.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
Did you try turning off Apple Music in Settings? I just did that, and all
mention of Apple Music goes away from the Music app, including in the search
results.

------
barrowclift
While I agree iOS 13’s Music.app is pretty shoddy in many respects, there’s
_plenty_ of alternatives other than Spotify that might better fit their
requirements. (Marvis Pro, Soor, etc.)

I consolidate the biggest players yearly in a review, which might be helpful
for the author’s search: [https://barrowclift.me/post/second-annual-ios-music-
player-c...](https://barrowclift.me/post/second-annual-ios-music-player-
competition)

~~~
samstevens
This looks incredible! I've bookmarked this to check out later, but as an
immediate question: do any of these support Apple Music/Spotify as a backend
for downloading music? I'd prefer to stick with a monthly subscription for
access to all music if at all possible.

Edit: also, you have an incredibly pretty website.

~~~
ubercow13
Some support acting as a client for Apple Music, including Marvis. The API is
quite comprehensive, they can do most stuff the official app can do, including
libary curation and discovery stuff. One exception is downloading songs in
advance (you can add new music to your library, but not download it to your
device; however if you go back to the Apple app to kick off the downloads, the
downloaded songs are played through the 3rd party app after that). If you just
add to your library and stream, you wouldn't need to do that.

------
poulsbohemian
He's completely right about Apple Music and it's been bad since long before
iOS 13. The navigation is incredibly difficult to understand. I get very
frustrated about why I have to both tell Apple I love something and put it in
my library before their algorithms are smart enough to figure out that maybe I
like that band / song and they should find related music. The Spotify
discovery algorithms are better in every way.

So why even bother with Apple Music - it's really simple and it's why I see
Apple services being huge... you get an Apple card and its cash back will pay
your Apple Music and Apple TV+ and Apple News+ bill every month. Why pay for
another music service when Apple Music is "good enough" and is "free" at that
point?

~~~
dangus
That doesn’t make sense, the cash back could just be cash. It doesn’t make
those services magically free.

~~~
poulsbohemian
Except there's a cycle - you get 3% back on Apple purchases. Notice I said
"free" with air quotes - sure, you are spending money, but you are also being
rewarded for staying in the Apple walled garden. So back to my point - why pay
$9-$15/mo for Spotify when if you play the game, Apple has a "good enough"
product and is incentivizing you monetarily to the point that their services
become "included" rather than a separate line item in your monthly budget.
Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but to a wide swath in middle America it does.

~~~
dangus
That still doesn’t make sense. You could use the cash back on a Spotify
subscription just the same.

The Apple Card’s credit card rewards aren’t even that good compared to what
other large banks offer (e.g. the Citi Double Cash card).

------
dangus
> Except that I already pay for Apple Music, I don’t use these tabs, and I’m
> considering leaving Apple Music for Spotify

Stop ranting and do it. Vote with your wallet. Your $10 tells Apple that
everything is fine.

I don’t subscribe to any music, personally. I use the Music app with Apple
Music disabled (Settings > Music > Show Apple Music (Off)).

~~~
samstevens
If you disable Apple Music, what happens to the tabs? Do you only have Library
and Search?

And $10 for unlimited music ($5 because I'm a student) is unbeatable. I just
wish the app was better.

~~~
tolqen
Library, Radio, Search

------
Nextgrid
I was considering making a blog post comparing the design of the "golden age"
of iOS versus now. I see someone already beat me to that and am grateful for
it.

Look at the screenshots in the previous versions compared to now. Design is
down to personal preference (personally I think the earlier versions had more
"rich" design and a personality, bits of which were lost with each upgrade)
but you can't argue that we are losing _functionality_ , despite screen sizes
going _up_ and having more than enough space to accommodate all the features.

------
egypturnash
My main beef with Music as it currently stands is that the Now Playing tab is
just a tiny phone-sized thing that refuses to fill the screen of my tablet. I
wanna plug that thing into the stereo, play music, and SEE THE ALBUM ART like
it’s 1986 and I’ve got the LP jacket sitting in front of the turntable.

Also the occasional attempts to upsell me to their streaming service that
bring up a blank window that sits there waiting for something to load off the
net and can only be dismissed by force quitting Music and _hoping_ it doesn’t
decide to do that again when I relaunch it can die in a fire.

I don’t curate playlists much and when I do it’s on the computer.

------
mrtksn
Is it possible that some un-learning needs to be done here? I know some people
who cannot get over Winamp, hate everything that is not like Winamp.

I don't share the same frustrations with the author, so the correct title
maybe should be "iOS 13's Music App Sucks (according to me)".

My music listening process is like "I hear a song, ask Siri about the name of
the song, tap on the song listen to the song and start a radio with that song
and if another song comes to my mind search for it add it as play next. If I
like s song I add it to my library".

I almost always listen to music like that, only the beginning would be
different(Instead of asking Siri, a song would come to my mind and start from
there).

I briefly got frustrated when Apple hide the Love button but quickly forgot
about it.

Anyway, I don't believe in playlists, I believe in moods. Apple Music works
great for me while Spotify was the worst among many. With Spotify, I am
supposed to do labour in order to listen to music. That's not me, I don't
chase playlists. Youtube is also great, they also manage to suggest very
relevant music videos when I start from something.

~~~
samstevens
We just have different music listening processes. My process used to be
supported (browsing my Library by Artist, Album, Genre, etc.) and got pushed
to the side to support a process more like yours (Radio, Apple's curated mood
playlists, etc.). I wish Apple's designers didn't limit my process in order to
make room for other peoples'.

~~~
klodolph
I still browse my library by artist, album, and genre. All I have to do is
press the library tab, and the app seems to remember its position so I don’t
even have to do that. This doesn’t outrage me and I don’t understand the
complaint.

------
Demiurge
So did 12, 11, ... 7, when they stopped allowing to sort songs and albums,
which worked in 6. Things got much worse once they added Apple Music, it's
been a ridiculously painful minesweeper game not to sign up. I buy most of my
music on bandcamp, and upload the mp3s through iTunes. As long as that works,
I will _never_ subscribe, so stop forcing me...

------
luckycharms810
This article really struck a nerve with me. I've been going around trying to
explain to people that the experience of listening to music has got
progressively worse over the last 20 years.

* Discovery is back to being passive - recommendations come from the company that you are subscribed to.

* Quality is paid for separately - the subscription has a fee, your data has a separate fee.

* Quality is not guaranteed - it depends on your current internet connection.

* There are dead zones.

* Most apps I've used do a terrible job showing you only the downloaded music you have.

* Your available music is subject to the deals between record labels and subscription services.

* Subscription services aren't incentivized to house more obscure / old / rare / hard to find music.

* Music is siloed in to different subscription services. ( We are moving to a Showtime vs Starz vs HBO vs Netflix model )

What really gets me is that at the end of the day - going the legal route of a
subscription service is truly only marginally better for artists.

------
vlucas
> First things first, why do I get a tab bar with 5 icons, and I only ever use
> 2 of them? I don’t care about “For You”, “Browse” and I certainly don’t give
> a rat’s ass about ”Radio”.

You lost me on the opening sentence. I didn't even bother to read the rest of
the article. I was expecting this to be based some some valid objective
reasons why the app sucks, not personal preferences.

I use Spotify, and have found the "Radio" feature really handy to find new
music that is similar to music I already like - especially when creating a new
radio station from a custom playlist I made or artist I like.

~~~
jschwartzi
Actually the radio is the biggest gripe I have with Spotify. They globally
aggregate everything you've ever liked, so if you have tastes in multiple
genres it's basically impossible to get your indie rock stations to stop
playing EG trance or house music without also telling Spotify that no you
actually don't like the dance music you also play sometimes.

The curated playlists are much better mainly because their radio algorithms
are absolutely terrible.

~~~
accatyyc
How do you start the radio? If you start it from a song of the genre you want
to listen to now, or a playlist containing mostly that genre, it won't mix in
random stuff you've liked before. I get very nice mood/genre radios just by
starting them from some song I liked currently.

~~~
jschwartzi
Usually from a song or playlist, and no matter where I've started it it will
start mixing stuff in that isn't remotely similar. Unless it's trance or
house.

------
jedberg
I've seen a couple of rants about Apple software here on HN the last few days.
It's important to remember that Apple has _never_ been very good at software
services.

Sometimes they make something good, but usually they make "just ok".

Because they never had to be good. Their hardware was compelling enough that
people just suffered through their software because they had to.

But now they're trying to make money from their software services. They're
probably fooled into thinking they are doing a good job because their revenue
is so high and their customer base is so large, especially compared to their
competitors.

But I think that's a red herring for them. They are still benefiting from
their installed hardware base. I doubt they would have even half the customer
base they do if they were just selling software (like say on Windows).

If they really want to make software services a key pillar of their business,
they need to step up their game. They need to interview customers and listen
to their needs. They need to collect analytics on usage _and then actually
analyze them_ to improve their products.

I think if they would spend a bit more resources on their software, and give
their engineers a bit more leeway to experiment and actually talk to
customers, they would be far more successful than they already are.

I think their culture of secrecy is hurting them in the software space, and
always has.

~~~
pb7
> Their hardware was compelling enough that people just suffered through their
> software because they had to.

I couldn’t disagree more. Apple, from my understanding, is famously successful
_because_ they make both great hardware and great software. It’s the
combination of both that made their hardware products sell like hot cakes.
It’s the reason that year after year people keep complaining about the “Apple
tax” on comparably-specced hardware. Customers don’t care because they want
Apple software on their machines. Their operating systems are well optimized
and user friendly. Their core apps range from decent to really great
(presumably because the teams working on them are highly independent). Many of
their core apps don’t even need third party replacements because they do
everything you’ll ever need them to do. I just don’t see the argument for
their software being consistently bad. Are there also bad examples? Yup. But I
would pick Apple over Microsoft for consumer software any day of the week
despite the former being “a hardware company” and the latter being “a software
company”.

~~~
proximitysauce
Apple makes bad _internet_ software. It’s ok at software that runs without any
services but anything that requires internet access is a disaster.

Even their “good” software is only good if you use exactly how Apple wants.

~~~
pb7
I would argue that iMessage is excellent. At no point have I wanted to use any
of the alternatives in the many years of using it.

In any case, calling any of their services a disaster is disingenuous to begin
with.

~~~
jedberg
> I would argue that iMessage is excellent.

I wouldn't. Interacting with people who don't use iMessage is awful. It gets
very confused when you try to send group messages when some people have
iMessage and some don't, for example.

Google's offerings handle this much better, especially if you're on Android,
but even if you aren't.

~~~
pb7
What you’re describing is no longer iMessage and I would still say it works
pretty well given the archaic technology involved. I don’t think contacting
people on Signal via WhatsApp works too well either.

How does Google’s offering handle this situation better?

~~~
jedberg
iMessage suffers from the same interoperability problems that most Apple
software does -- they don't really consider use cases that don't involve
Apple.

Hangouts for example understands how different carriers handle different types
of data differently, and accounts for that when sending messages. So when you
send to a group with different capabilities, it adjusts accordingly and
automatically in the background.

~~~
pb7
What exactly is your issue with iMessage? Messages on iOS also automatically
adjust to the participants' capabilities. Have you used iMessage recently? It
degrades quite well. You can't backfill functionality that doesn't exist on
SMS.

~~~
jedberg
I use iMessage every day. Most of my friends are on iMessage. Most of my
family too.

The problem is our family group text. Some of the family is on Android. For
the family group text, I use Hangouts because not all the messages go through
if I use iMessage.

------
samatman
This article prompted me to clean up my playlists, which have been 'append
only' for quite a few years, and wow. What a disaster.

First: swipe-from-right doesn't reveal a red delete button, like you'd expect.
So I hit the search engine, discover you have to long-press to delete.
Annoying, but okay, progress.

Now, there are some albums on my Playlist page. Which is weird, and I don't
remember putting them there. But when I long-press those albums, it gives me
"Add to a Playlist..", which is... weird, can you add a playlist to a
playlist? Anyway, there's a "Remove.." as well, let's try that.

The option screen lets me Remove Downloads or Delete from Library. I try
Remove Downloads, since this is an album I put in iTunes myself and I don't
want to lose it.

This... removes the album from my phone. And keeps the Playlist. There seems
to be no way to remove the playlist, and keep the album.

That is, of course, what I want to do. It's an album! It doesn't need to be a
playlist!! When I want it, I go to Artists or Albums!!!

This is madness. Does anyone at Apple actually use their own software?

~~~
pwinnski
Yes, you can add a playlist to a playlist. I do it frequently.

If you are playing an album and choose to save to a playlist, it gives that
playlist the same name (and art) as the album. What else would it do? Deleting
the playlist does not delete the album, why would it?

I can definitely see your confusion, and I'm sure it could be better-designed.
That said, I never have any issues, and playlists are my primary use case for
Apple Music.

~~~
samatman
Remove the Downloads removes the corresponding album, so I'm not inclined to
find out if Delete from Library does the same thing.

Why wouldn't they call it "Delete Playlist"? And why does Remove the Downloads
remove the underlying album, instead of the correct behavior, which is to
remove the playlist from my phone but keep it in the cloud and my other
devices?

This is bad no matter how you gloss it.

~~~
samatman
If I click Remove the Downloads on a playlist that isn't based on an album, is
it going to remove those individual tracks from my phone?

When would that ever be the behavior that someone wants? Actions on a playlist
should be limited to that playlist, this is UX 101 stuff.

~~~
pwinnski
That depends on what you've chosen for the setting related to that. If you
'Add songs to library when adding playlist,' then no, the songs/albums remain.
Otherwise, the playlist is your only view to that music, and so removing it
removes your only view.

I believe the default is _not_ to add songs to your library when adding a
playlist, so deleting the playlist removes your view.

------
the_gastropod
Anyone remember Rdio? It was such a beautifully designed app. It's wild that
Spotify and Apple failed to learn anything from them. Granted, Rdio did go
bankrupt, but I think that had more to do with record label negotiations, and
less with their app design. But who knows.

~~~
kylehotchkiss
Pandora bought them (I think?) and never really took advantage of their design
focus.

I miss Rdio everyday still. I'm nostalgic for it the same way I was for Palm's
WebOS. Looked great but felt it never got enough eyes.

Nowaways I'm on Apple Music. Little clunky, but at least the apps are native
and not webviews. I expect Apple to improve it over the next 2-3 years though,
they've made Photos apps pretty compelling over the years. I don't want to pay
for any service that releases a "Mac App" that's just a website with MacOS
chrome.

------
nytesky
We have used Apple Music for over a year, and it works great for our use case
“I want to listen to song by such and such” — with kids you do a lot of repeat
plays.

Integration with Echo devices was a nice plus, but we had been gifted a Google
Home which does not play Apple Music.

People rave about Spotify, so we took the plunge. It did link with my Google
Home and Echo devices.

Everything else was disappointing. The interface was fine, but seemed to not
work as well, there were no lyrics and we found many artists just missing.

But the worst was Alexa integration, we would ask for some mainstream song and
get some random Muzak cover, no matter how carefully we specified the artist
and song.

And CarPlay integration did not allow access to library or song selection.

~~~
deerIRL
The Muzak issue is what actually caused me to switch from Spotify to Apple
Music.

My discovery playlists started replacing mainstream songs with muzak and there
was no way at the time to block an artist or specific songs.

I can only listen to terrible chiptunes of In the hall of the Mountain King so
many times.

------
sbarre
The elephant in the room here is that Apple forces you to use the Music app to
manage/navigate/enjoy the music you have locally on your phone (I'm 90% sure
I'm right about this).

They maintain a monopoly on that functionality, and therefore when they make
decisions that don't align with your desires or expectations, you have no
recourse. You can't just use a different app - on your own device - that suits
you better.

If they opened this up to third-party apps, we wouldn't even be having this
conversation.

~~~
herodotus
No, this is not correct. I sell an App that lets you play music that is stored
locally on your phone. Before you rush to get it though: it is restricted to
Operas. It also lets you play cloud music in your library if you subscribe to
iTunes Match.

~~~
sbarre
Thank you for clarifying that. I didn't realize this was possible.

While I am not into Opera, my dad is, and he has an iPhone.. can you share the
name of your app, I bet he would be very interested.

------
q_eng_anon
Apple, Spotify, etc. (or a third-party) need to agree on a standard format for
a users music library so that we can switch between UIs more easily - separate
the UI from the actual music provider, allow more niche UIs

Obviously nobody will do this because their whole game is locking people in -
but nothing is stopping Apple/Spotify from exposing a dev interface to Apple
Music's UI components that would allow essentially the same thing but only
with Apple Music as backend provider

------
mattcantstop
Rdio was amazing. I use Apple Music now (family plan) but I would pay probably
$25/month to have Rdio back. Rdio had the best features for following other
people who had similar interests to me and seeing what they were currently
listening to. It was amazing. And it was an experience using Rdio. I would be
in the app during my work day quite a lot seeing what music there was to
discover. Music discovery was never better. I want Rdio back!

~~~
zymhan
It makes me sad that Pandora never expanded the social features within their
platform. It has never been easy, or even always possible, to just share a
song with another Pandora user.

------
Invictus0
That app has gotten worse and worse every year. I get that they need to cater
to Apple Music subscribers: fine. Why can't there be a setting to turn off all
the Apple Music stuff for nonsubscribers? And for people like myself that
really really hate the app, why lock down the APIs to make third party music
apps shit as well? It's just so frustrating, the music app really has been
terrible since somewhere around iOS 8.

------
coreai
I have both Spotify and Apple Music but somehow the Spotify interface to me
seems just simple enough that I can play what I want and the interface gets
out of the way. With Apple it’s almost like they want you to listen to what
they want you to listen and not what you want to listen to. This is what
basically companies trying to push their content do over what content you
prefer and it almost always ends up in bad interfaces.

------
ProfessorLayton
The Music.app has been one of my biggest pain points in all of iOS. Apple has
always been opinionated about their software designs, but I can’t seem to make
sense of the stance taken when they made the music player.

Is it music discovery? If so, why is the For You tab 2/3 _recently played and
favorites??_ — I’ve obviously already discovered and liked that music! All the
other stuff is below the fold or multiple swipes away.

The fact that all the other tabs are lazy-loaded drives me nuts. Just a
completely blank page with a spinner, so I cant even scroll down to where I
know I want to navigate until it loads (Super fun on the train with cellular
dead zones).

More fun bugs:

\- Add next: [https://imgur.com/mIOn4I7](https://imgur.com/mIOn4I7)

\- Literally failing at music playback:
[https://imgur.com/4jCszaz](https://imgur.com/4jCszaz)

\- Broken layout on smaller phones:
[https://imgur.com/MVTN1nS](https://imgur.com/MVTN1nS)

------
larrik
My complaints, with a library primarily MP3's:

1) It often forgets where I am in a song, or in a playlist. Or which playlist
2) After "upgrading" to iOS 13, all my songs now have "jump forward/backward
30 seconds" buttons instead of "Next/Prev". Wat 3) Sometimes it jumps into the
middle of the next song. It's done this for like 5 years, although 13 is the
first time to actually realize it's the middle of the song, so I can at least
rewind. 4) I sync it to a single iTunes library, and every time I back up my
phone, it duplicates any playlist I've used since last time... (probably more
an iTunes complaint, which is a dumpster fire and has been since version 1.0)

It's generally gotten worse over the years. The Radio feature used to be
awesome (way better than Spotify's), but now it's a paid feature?

I love that you can "Play Next" vs "Play After" in iOS 13, though.

------
meerita
Apple Music and Google Play, both applications made by managers hungry and
desperate to generate profits but very unconcerned about the usability of the
apps themselves. The sad thing is that you can't make apps that compete with
Apple Music or Google Play. I would have already paid 100 dollars for a well
made Winamp for me.

~~~
wool_gather
Cesium is a competitor/replacement for on-device library playback on iOS.
Spotify competes for streaming. Not clear what you mean by "can't make apps
that compete".

~~~
andrewzah
Spotify can't compete on the apple homepod, which is a huge (primary?) selling
point for apple music.

Sure, you can use airplay, but that's more involved than "hey siri". Being
able to just use your voice is great when you're cooking or washing the
dishes.

Cesium is a great app.

------
iwalton3
I've been using the Neutron media player app for years now. It allows you to
play most file formats (including opus), supports navigation by files, and
allows you to upload files via FTP to bypass iTunes. It's also one of those
rare applications these days where nearly everything is configurable.

~~~
NickBusey
This looks quite nice, thanks for the recommendation.

------
fit2rule
After years of misery trying to just have a plain old music collection,
fighting Apple all the way, I've built myself .. a plain old music collection.
Just a filesystem with all my music, collected over the decades, carefully
organised by hand.

All it took was the ability to manipulate and administer a filesystem - a
skill that, it seems, all the major players are hell bent on devolving for all
their users.

I taught my kids to use the filesystem. They find stuff faster than any of
their peers.

I use this same technique for bookmarks too - if I like a page, I print it to
.PDF and put it in the filesystem. 15 years of .PDF-based bookmarks later, I
don't need the Internet to find stuff that I've read years ago. Its still
right there.

Seriously, kids. The filesystem is your friend. Please stop teaching the users
that its hard. Its really not.

------
cyxxon
I don't use Apple Music, but Spotify, so I am a little confused about the idea
that Spotify does not have a library, or "the concept of a library". I mainly
use Sptify via their library, and only rarely use curated playlists or
anything like that. Am I missing something here?

~~~
npo9
Can I rip my own CDs and import them into Spotify or am I limited to the music
provided by the Spotify streaming service?

I think this is what is meant by a “music library”

~~~
SamuelAdams
Yes, this feature has been available for a while. You must have a Premium
subscription to do it on mobile, though.

[https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/listen...](https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/features/listen-
to-local-files/)

~~~
npo9
Cool! This feature was not available when I last used Spotify, which was
admittedly years ago.

------
pianoben
I still lament the demise of Rdio - it truly did have the best UX of all the
streaming players. How unfortunate that they couldn't make the business work!

Just about all of the gripes in TFA were non-issues or avoided with thoughtful
design, way back in 2012.

------
m0zg
It's busted so thoroughly I switched to Google Music instead, in spite of its
cringeworthy and inconsistent UI. One thing that's particularly bad is search.
It's not even difficult to do it well in this space, but for as long as
lemmings keep paying, there's no incentive for Apple to give a shit. They
unconditionally give a shit about hardware as a company. Software is like
"meh, it looks pretty but other than that we don't have to care". Hairforce
One needs to do his job. At the kooky prices you're charging you should be
sweating every single detail throughout the entire stack, silicon to pixels.

------
blobs
Because the UX suffers from UI design that is driven by marketing. UI design
should be driven by a passion to create the best UX, but that's almost
impossible in this $$$ world..

------
efrafa
What drives me crazy is that at some point music app stopped recognizing my
artworks in interpret view. They all have generic icons despite I have them
all filled out in iTunes :(

------
psychomugs
I have (discounted) subscriptions to both Apple Music and Spotify. Apple Music
wins for integration with personal libraries; Spotify's approach to local file
handling is a kludge and I listen to a lot of music that's not available on
either platform. Spotify wins for their recommendation system and continuity;
I haven't found AM's recommendations to be as good and it's still boggling how
hard Apple pushes Continuity in everything _but_ music.

------
astannard
Personally I have moved away from Apple for music. I found the apps on both
Mac and mobile get worse and worse. Things that were easy such as using
AirTunes got much harder to use. I uploaded my music collection to google and
use a combination of that and Amazon music. I find myself wanting to create a
playlist for my Apple watch for jogging and putting it off as I dont want to
deal with iTunes.

------
DHPersonal
An alternative that I found pretty pleasant — but once I got an Apple Music
subscription, a bit unnecessary — is an app called Cs Music by Mike Clay. He
has a new app in pre-order status called SongOwl that might prove to be better
than Cs Music, but I haven’t seen much of it. I bought Cs Music to get a
landscape view music player again, but I’ve since just accepted that most
people use portrait mode these days.

------
burntcookie90
I find that it works quite well. This is definitely more of a "rant" than
anything else of a user that doesn't like where things are going.

------
machinecoffee
I'm struggling to see how to add songs to a playlist for my iPod - ok its old
(2007 ipod nano), but I love it, so I guess I'll struggle on.

Saying that, lots of people complained about iTunes, especially that it tried
do do too much.

Now it does less, and should be more focused on music but I find myself being
constantly frustrated with it too.

------
bryanmgreen
I no longer use Spotify, instead going for Amazon HD because the sound is so
much better, that being said...

Spotify UI and UX is so significantly light years better than any other music
app on the market. Not perfect, but it should be a model for everyone else.
Back when I used it, I even liked how they integrated my personal library.

~~~
andrewzah
Spotify premium has 320kbp/s as an option. You are not going to hear any
difference from that versus FLAC/ALAC/PCM audio. This has been debunked to
death many, many times over.

It's definitely better than non-premium spotify, though. Bandcamp is also a
good place to find FLAC-quality files and keep them forever without DRM.

------
woofwoofwoof
My problems with IOS music app are 1) full-text search is bad - often can't
find what exists 2) it is slow - For You tabs take forever to load even on
fast WIFI/LTE connections 3) navigation is not convenient - I like playlists
and it takes a few taps to reach them.

------
navels
Another reason I've stayed with Spotify: scrobbling. AFAIK Apple Music clients
don't have native support for last.fm scrobbling and the third-party solutions
I've read have big flaws.

OTOH the lack of a streaming Apple Watch Spotify client is keeping me from
getting an Apple Watch :-|

------
HeckFeck
One of the context menus mentioned in the article says:

    
    
      Suggest Less Like This
    

I presume Apple mean "Suggest _Fewer_ Like This"? "Suggest _Less_ Like This"
means you have some dissatisfaction in the manner Apple used to suggest these
songs.

~~~
samatman
Frequency isn't countable, so I'd parse that sentence as "Suggest tracks like
this less often".

"Suggest fewer tracks like this" would also be a valid request, the point is
that it's an ellipsis either way, so I don't see a problem.

That's before we get into the fact that the 'invalid' "Ten items or less"
formulation has been frequent in English for hundreds of years...

------
gargs
The one thing I wish they improved was being able to scroll through my
playlists using an index on the right (like in the Contacts app). Right now,
there are limited sorting options but all of them require considerable
scrolling. Also, the cells are huge for some reason.

------
baggy_trough
Try the dumpster fire that is CarPlay Music - for example, get to a complete
album from a song in your library, if the entire album isn't in your library.
Virtually impossible without going on a verbal text adventure with 50% Siri
misfires.

------
joshschreuder
I recommend trying some alternative apps.

I'm currently using Marvis which I really like, but there's also Cs (formerly
Cesium), Miximum and Soor which differ quite a bit but are all much nicer than
the default Music.app

------
kdot
I hate that when I select a song from an album, all of the songs are queued
up. Even though I just want to listen to a single track.

I also really dislike iTunes on Mac, it's like they stripped out all of the
usability.

------
jvreeland
The podcast app is trash too

~~~
css
Lest we forget, the OG Apple podcast app had a tape reel prior to the iOS 7
redesign: [https://9to5mac.com/wp-
content/uploads/sites/6/2013/04/podco...](https://9to5mac.com/wp-
content/uploads/sites/6/2013/04/podcomp.png)

~~~
Nextgrid
At least the app used to have a personality and an unique design language.

Now it’s the same flat and empty garbage as every other one of their apps.

Btw if you’re looking for a non-shit podcasts app I highly recommend Overcast.

------
ngcc_hk
I worry about the file sync more than the music part. New one I can sync or
Copy file fine. Now you can copy but never when it finished.

------
viburnum
The music app is also really slow to boot up. Ten years ago it was automatic.
Just a huge performance regression.

~~~
Nextgrid
I have suspicions the new app is a web app just like parts of iTunes are web
apps.

~~~
viburnum
I had suspected it was Swift but your idea makes more sense.

------
andrewzah
Some annoying things about apple music:

* I can't easily see the songs that I liked while listening to a station or in general. Spotify saves these under "liked songs" and "liked from radio". going through these later at my leisure and adding them to relevant playlists is much nicer than making me add each song to a playlist as I listen to it.

* there's no good web ui like spotify. beta.music.apple.com has existed for a while[0] but is buggy and randomly stops playing, forcing a refresh. I can't edit playlists other than adding songs to them. I use linux so I would have to use wine, which is not preferable.

* spotify has 5 daily new mixes based on the genres/artists I listened to. apple music has 3 weekly playlists, updated on friday, and one is just a rehash of what I listened to: "Favorites Mix", "Chill Mix", "New Mix". If I can't have daily updates, I'd rather have it update on mondays...

compare those to my spotify mixes: #1: japanese/foreign music. #2: bill evans,
cannonball adderly-esque jazz. #3: david bowie and rush. etc.. these are
actually compelling based on my mood that day.

* on the music app homepage, the recently added music section takes up way too much space with only 2 album pictures per row.

* when I play a song, album, or playlist, it repeats forever instead of stopping or suggesting similar music like spotify.

* the radio tab is garbage, showing me genres and artists I never listen to. I don't care about "Top 100 songs", as should be evident from the songs I listen to and save. spotify's homepage recommendations always felt they were kinda close or at least attempting to take my preferences into account. apple's recommendations are just whatever is new in the (mainstream) music world, which is almost always irrelevant to me.

* the music app's UX in general is bad, it's quite clunky compared to spotify's app.

* spotify's app detects when you're driving and shows a simplistic interface with huge buttons. all music apps should do this.

* translation of foreign song titles is very annoying when I can speak the language. I understand why apple and youtube do this, but please give us the option to disable it for specific languages or in general. My phone is in Korean anyway.

Positives of the apple music app:

* the lyrics viewer is much better in my opinion. I hardly used this in spotify's app, but I often enable it in apple's app.

* apple's music selection is very good. I only had one instance of not being able to find a song that I had on spotify, and that was a relatively new japanese album.

I keep apple music because my family uses the homepod daily in the kitchen,
and my mom is used to the app now on our shared plan. Plus it would be a pain
to re-make my playlists again. But if I can find a way to have siri
integration with spotify on the homepod, I would switch back in a heartbeat.

I'm disappointed because apple has the money and talent to pull off a really
good music app, and they push out something mediocre, as if they don't really
care that much. I hate apple's new UX choices in general as they seem to be
made for older people with bad vision. (this wouldn't be bad if it were an
accessibility option like font size. as it is, having few things take up so
much space is annoying.)

[0]: [https://beta.music.apple.com](https://beta.music.apple.com)

------
hateful
The severe lack of options for customizing interfaces in any computer system
really infuriates me. I understand that too many options can lead to a basic
user configuring an application in a way that would cause them to call tech
support because it makes the program unusable, but I find most software for
day-to-day purposes (playing music being a perfect example) infuriating. Here
are some examples:

1\. The Pandora app (at least on Android) will pop up the bright white "today"
screen about a minute after I get in my car - with no way to disable it.

2\. The Youtube music app doesn't play landscape, and if you full screen it it
removes all relevant information and just shows a photo.

3\. This is a big one: the Android share functionality is terrible. It tries
to give you recent suggestions, but they're always not working. I would prefer
to choose a list of share targets and have it just show me them. It's almost
never relevant. Most of the time the first result is to text a person I've
never talked to in years. I feel like this is a case of "If all you have is a
hammer" since it's Google and they're using search to show the result instead
of just letting you set the list.

4\. Every new OS forgets that people may have more than one monitor - it
drives me nuts how we can't get Windows to work on Windows in general. Why
can't I save the position I want an app to open at? Why can't I see where it's
going to open in a properties window and manually set the position? Why can't
I choose what will load on the focused monitor vs. the default, vs. a specific
place?

5\. Dark mode, dark mode, dark mode (this has been way better lately)

6\. Music programs (and in-car systems) seem to handle "random" in different
ways - and there's no indication of what type it is. In my current car (a
Chevy Sonic) I cannot play all albums random - I can play all songs random,
but if I turn off random it will just play the songs in random order. I want
to have my music on random, and when I turn it off - I want it to play by
Artist, Album Year, Track. Songs in alphabetical order is never what's wanted.

7\. Android took away the ability to search for apps directly, you have to go
to the search page and scroll down and hope "apps" is there.

8\. A lot of mobile apps do not allow you to modify the search you've done.
You have to start over. And sometimes you start typing the first word and none
of the suggestions are that word alone, you can only select a phrase, but if
you do, there's no changing it to what you want. You have to manually type.

I can think of much more. But this was already a rant that was slightly off
topic and not asked for,

------
ropiwqefjnpoa
Spotify rules. It's great seeing a company not a part of the big 5 just
dominate them all in this space. At least until they get purchased...

------
fnord77
apple music has a horrific UI that makes zero sense.

------
newsoundwave
> which makes me irrationally unhappy

I'm somewhat comforted to hear that others have similar reactions to music
applications. I rarely ever feel myself getting angry over things, but the one
thing that gets me feeling uncomfortably heated is thinking about how much
worse music apps and streaming services have gotten over the years.

I think I, like many people, have a very emotional connection to music and
things that get in the way of that feel like a very personal attack, even
though that's not reasonable in any way.

At one point, I think I was signed up to every music stream service and had
some issue or another with all of them:

* Google Play Music - nearly ideal, but incredibly buggy once I switched away from Android to iOS, and the fact that it's in perpetual "dying but not dead" frustrates me. I've also moved almost completely away from Google at this point. * YouTube Music - Takes the worst parts of Spotify and YouTube and puts them together, with no benefit over the app it's replacing. * Spotify - I find the UI infuriating after a year of trying to switch to Spotify. Every time I try to let go of control and listen to my music the Spotify way, I can feel myself getting more and more frustrated. Additionally, I don't think they understand what a queue is, their implementation of a queue never ceases to surprise and frustrate me. Playing everything by a single artist is difficult to do well, without dragging in a lot of crap, and the "This is $ARTIST" playlists are mostly awful, IMO. * Tidal - Lacking many basic features, has the same queuing issues as Spotify. * Deezer - Almost gets queuing correct, but the fact that they always try to add music to your queue when it's empty and the fact that clearing a queue still isn't possible is a non-starter. I know there's a feature to disable auto-play, auto-add music, but on three separate occasions I've tried to turn it off, with support attempting to manually turn it off for me, without it working. * Rdio - Was almost perfect, but is now dead * Amazon Music - In terms of conceptual design, works better than most, but I've mostly gotten off of Amazon's services and their app's performance was abysmal last I tried. * Apple Music - I have many of the same complaints as the author, I just can mostly overlook them as they have a weird queue that I can almost adapt to. It frustrates me once in a while, but it lets me listen to music.

Apple Music is currently my daily driver, but I still have several premium
streaming accounts as I _want_ to listen to music and will happily pay for
them, just unhappy with the offerings atm.

I'm not contributing a ton to the conversation this late into discussion, just
sympathizing with the author that, at least with streaming services, I can
very much empathize with someone who can't find a good solution to just play
music.

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morango
I'm just glad the author did try spotify because they're trash too.

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throwaway55554
I don't use the Music App because I don't maintain all my mp3s in iTunes and
without iTunes you can't (keep my honest here) get your mp3s into the Music
App.

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alexashka
Music app sucks, this guy's attitude sucks. Do you see a pattern here?

Be the change you want to see in the world Samuel.

~~~
stanferder
That's what he's doing though. Change flows from discontent. Complaints are
the fuel of improvement.

~~~
viburnum
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty)

~~~
stanferder
Interesting, thanks for the pointer.

