
Redesigning Apple Music after Being Rejected - seangransee
https://medium.com/@jasonyuan/i-got-rejected-by-apple-music-so-i-redesigned-it-b7e2e4dc64bf
======
ProfessorLayton
Apple Music is by far the least polished Apple product I use on a regular
basis (I'm on a family plan). There are so my UX problems with it I don't know
where to start.

Biggest issues:

\- Discoverability is awful. Playlists are ok, but heavily recommending entire
albums is bizarre. Its like trying new foods by going to Costco. It would make
more sense to select top picks from an artist.

\- Extremely ungraceful handling of spotty cell coverage. Playback will
abruptly stop to buffer, but the UI gives absolutely no feedback. The
play/pause button just behaves as if _I_ told it to stop, and is unresponsive
to my input. This is especially terrible while driving, where playback can
stop for other reasons (Like a bluetooth disconnect).

\- Radio stations inexplicably play at lower volumes than the rest of the
service. The radio tab is pretty much a giant banner for whatever Apple wants
to push, instead of basing it around the user.

\- _Really_ buggy. It will arbitrarily skip to the next song in the middle of
playback. Sometimes it will refuse to play a song in my library, and will move
on to the next. No error, no feedback, nothing.

I could go on and on.

I really wish this was its own app on the App Store, so we could have some
semblance of feedback. As well as regular bug fixes without waiting for the
next iOS release.

~~~
abalone
The polish issue I see is mainly the visible seams between Apple Music, iTunes
Store and your library. It's ugly that the search makes you choose a context.
There should just be one simple profile for an artist. Show your
favorited/"added" albums up top and everything else from them down below.
Whether it's full tracks or just previews should just depend on whether you
and/or they participate in Apple Music.

I also feel the UI could be simplified further by burying the concept of
"downloading" somewhat akin to how iCloud Photo Library does it. It should
just aim to handle 95% of cases via intelligent caching, like cache all your
latest stuff and anything you recently put into a playlist. I know we on HN
tend to be advanced users who love manual control but we could still do it via
playlists. Get those download buttons out of the way for most folks.

I find discovery to be pretty good! The "My New Music Mix" is surprisingly
decent for me. That is entirely track-based and it's probably my main way of
discovering completely new music. I _used_ to hate For You because it felt
like browsing the 99 cent rental section of Blockbuster.. lots of old stuff
that was maybe good, but I'm mainly interested in new music. But the New Music
mix has changed my feeling.

~~~
m_mueller
I think you're missing an important point that GP made: Apple lately
absolutely refuses to give you any kind of error or even status informations
in its cloud products (Music, Photos, Notes, ...).

It's meant to just work like 'magic' \- as if all wireless connections as well
as the server and client software are nowadays so perfect that you'd never
encounter error states anymore, and it's all so fast that you don't need
progress information on anything. Right.

~~~
kalleboo
And in the one place they _do_ give you status (iCloud Photo Library), it
regularly shows completely bizarre numbers (I often see stuff like "Uploading
15 photos (369MB / 125MB)"

------
abrongersma
Music discovery is the primary reason that I've moved away from Apple Music.
It's become difficult to explore their music catalog, almost as if it's by
design. I've made the move to Spotify and it's been wonderful.

~~~
jobu
Interesting. I've been thinking about switching to Apple Music to have a bit
more control over my music. Spotify puts out some amazing curated playlists
that are constantly being updated, but then after a few weeks those playlists
suddenly turn to shit.

My theory is that they have a few people manually curate a list with good
songs for a while to train an AI, but when they finally turn control over to
the AI it falls on its face and starts adding shitty cover band music to the
list.

~~~
hbosch
You will appreciate Every Noise at Once[0] maybe. It's all AI, but uses data
from a massive set of users. It maps all chartable Spotify genres, and groups
them into 3 playlists each. So for the genre, say "classic french pop"[1],
you'd click in and see all the associated bands within that genre and see
Spotify playlist links – they are:

 _The Sound of Classic French Pop_ – A sampling of music that defines the
genre

 _The Pulse of Classic French Pop_ – Music that is often played by people who
listen to lots of Classic French Pop

 _The Edge of Classic French Pop_ – New or obscure music recommended for
people who like Classic French Pop

It's an incredibly deep web of playlists and music recommendations that has
completely changed the way I experience Spotify. Highly highly recommend.

__

0\.
[http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html](http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html)

1\. [http://everynoise.com/engenremap-
classicfrenchpop.html](http://everynoise.com/engenremap-classicfrenchpop.html)

~~~
CamperBob2
Hmm. This is pretty damned cool. I'd subscribe to Spotify if this were a real
interface to its catalog.

~~~
jeppebemad
I agree - Very cool! Under playlists you can launch in Spotify a playlist of
every genre. Is that what you were missing?

Thanks parent!

------
qubyte
The "headshots" idea seems to be optimised for the listening habits of the
author of this post. Not every artist (and almost none in my library) is a
singular person. For that matter, I don't really care what the artist looks
like. I'm more likely to recognise a logo when available, or an album cover
failing that.

~~~
brusch64
I can't recognize a single artist from his screenshots besides Lady Gaga.

MusicBee has some kind of band shot next to each band name. It is nice - but
in my list most of the bands are 3 to 5 dudes, so you can't really recognize
the bands with the headshot.

But I am definitely the hoarder type from his characterization - so his music
player is most definitely not the one for me.

------
paul7986
Apple Music is a horrid UI/UX! So confusing and way behind Spotify yet I use
it everyday.

I'd love to shuffle all my songs and also have Apple Music play similar tracks
to my huge song playlist. Discovering music is a chore in Apple Music. I
actually have to hunt and peck through a bloated UI.

From a frustrated customer!!!

~~~
FridgeSeal
The Apple Music UI is hands down one of the ugliest, worst designs interfaces
I've had the displeasure of using. I have no idea what's going on in Apple,
but along with iTunes, it feels like every new version gets worse in some way.

Why is the font _so big_ and so bold? Why is there so much empty space? It
goes far beyond whitespace: there's just large unused chunks. Why do I have to
go all the way back to the first screen to swap between albums and artists?
The now playing section at the bottom of the screen has pause and skip buttons
that are inexplicably enormous. I can't put my finger on it for sure (because
I don't have an iPhone atm) but why is it that the font (typeface and weight)
in Apple Music is different _to the rest of the OS_?

------
pfarnsworth
I want Apple Music to just play my fucking music. When I'm driving in my car,
trying to manipulate the buttons, etc, is almost impossible and in a rage I
turn it off. There is so much fucking swiping and hitting small buttons it's
tremendously frustrating.

I usually listen to music in my car, as opposed to in the office, so I want
big buttons and easy navigation. Does no one have an app that is designed
specifically for car use?

~~~
Angostura
I suspect Apple would like you to be using CarPlay rather than using an
interface specifically not meant to be used while driving.

~~~
massysett
That's a great idea. However, CarPlay is only available if you have a late-
model car, or if you replace your car stereo with a new one. Neither of these
is cheap options, and replacing the car stereo may not even be possible if
your car is too old to host one of these new units with the huge screen.

Further, having an interface that is problematic for driving is not
problematic ONLY for driving. I use music services while exercising, either
outside or on an indoor machine. I'm bouncing around, I don't want to stop,
and it's hard to hit these tiny little UI elements while I'm moving. The UI
for listening to music while exercising (or driving) is actually far inferior
for most touch screens when compared to an old iPod with click wheel or even
an old Sony Walkman cassette player.

Add in the fact that CarPlay on my late model car is incredibly glitchy. The
situation is so bad that I wonder if I would be better off putting music on
USB flash drives and plugging those into my car.

~~~
swift
This stuff could definitely use some work, I agree. One tip I thought I'd
share: the Music app has a widget that you can access on the lock screen which
lets you play the most recent albums (or playlists, presumably, though I don't
use them) with one tap. I find it quite handy.

------
charlesdenault
This is an incredible redesign, utilizing widely known gestures (swipes,
double taps, etc). Apple should embrace these further, IMO, and a casual-use
app like Music makes the most sense. I'm a longtime Spotify Premium user and I
tried v1 of Music but it was jus too painful. This would have made me stay.
Great job.

~~~
tracker1
I think the swipe gestures for add/next should probably be left/right to match
tinder... not that it's really much better than up/down, it is somewhat more
natural to swipe from side to side in terms of holding the device casually.

------
nsxwolf
I'm not in the Tinder generation so I don't want my music to work that way.
Software should work well for everyone.

~~~
charlesdenault
The gestures demonstrated are easily discoverable and are so widely used now,
I'd argue the majority of iOS/Android users are familiar. Snapchat, Instagram,
Facebook, Spotify, etc. all follow these similar UI/UX features. Software
should work well for everyone, but it's evolving and users adapt.

~~~
nsxwolf
I'm not sure which features of Tinder are part of my daily UX. I know it has a
different notion of "swipe left/swipe right" than most things I use - in the
apps I use that means "go back a page/go forward a page". In Tinder I'm
vaguely aware that one direction means "I want to have sex with you", but I am
not aware which direction that is.

~~~
ledak
There are hints, so swiping doesn't seem unintuitive. Btw, I've used tinder-
like gestures for my music discovery app based on Apple Music API (
[https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1182799885](https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1182799885)
). I think this pattern works perfectly for binary decisions.

------
tunesmith
Apple Music has freaked me out because I have a lot of my own recordings -
rehearsals, etc. After turning on iCloud sharing, it uploaded _most_ of them,
but it says others aren't available, and some of them got matched incorrectly.
They say when that happens, to delete them from your source library and then
re-add to let Apple match it again, since it apparently gets more accurate
over time. I haven't tried that yet since it's a huge project to back up my
recordings in a separate location and then re-add (even though I have the
library itself backed up). The other thing I can do is cancel my iCloud
sharing / match account, but then I'm not sure what happens to my recordings -
even though it's my source account, I've heard horror stories about iTunes
deleting some recordings on account cancellation if they've been categorized
incorrectly. So I've just felt sort of stuck until I find time to do some
major surgery.

~~~
eridius
You're overthinking it. If you turn off iCloud Music Library, any music you
already had on your computer is fine. This means your pre-existing music
library will be fine (assuming you didn't delete the music files off of your
computer). Yes, there was a bug at one point that could cause it to delete
some of your existing music, but it was relatively rare and was fixed shortly
after it was discovered.

As for matching, are you adding it from your iPhone, or from your computer?
Music matching is a lot more exact if you're adding it from your computer.

~~~
tunesmith
That bug must be what I remembered - I missed that it got fixed, all I heard
was that Apple was working on it. Thanks for letting me know, I think I might
nervously shut it off and revert to manually controlling what songs are on my
phone. Do you remember any sources on what it was and when/how it got fixed?

I added them from my laptop - I find the matching pretty lousy, though. Bjork
recordings are replaced by acoustic remixes, live-radio performances of songs
are replaced by studio recordings, etc. And then of course some of my own
songs are replaced by weird recordings I've never heard before. It seems that
any time I'm out and about and listen to a playlist for 30-45 minutes, at
least 1-2 songs are wrong.

All of these recordings are of course still fine on my laptop itself - I know
not to delete those.

~~~
eridius
I don't really know the details on how it was fixed, but I feel like it was
fixed within a week of it being first reported.

As for the matching, I'm not sure what to tell you. To the best of my
knowledge, all of the music I have was matched correctly (or uploaded if there
was no match). That said, I was originally an iTunes Match subscriber, and
it's certainly possible that maybe iTunes Match used stricter matching, though
I don't know why that would be because that sounds weird.

~~~
astrange
In the past Match used stricter matching than Apple Music for no real good
reason. They are the same now.

------
grandalf
Great job on the redesign!

My biggest UX gripe with Apple Music is that the app doesn't open into the
same state it was in last time I used it.

I'm not sure if this is an intentional decision meant to generate algorithmic
feed impressions (or some other reason), or an oversight.

------
phaed
I'd say remove that first quote you have on there. No one was thinking that,
but as soon as you said it, I couldn't help but have it in my mind the whole
time reading the article.

------
zyang
I think the hoarder vs nomad analogy is excellent. Apple Music has come a long
way since the hoarder heavy model, but still a long way to go before catching
up to Spotify's discovery.

------
fao_
> Wouldn’t it be awesome if, immediately after checking into a café on
> Facebook, Apple Music updates this Mood section to Focus/Study playlists?

This strikes me as being extremely, invasively creepy -- although I can
appreciate that some people might find this cool.

~~~
plttn
FWIW, Google Play Music already does something similar. It knows I'm at the
location I have my work set to, and one of the playlist categories it's
showing in my home feed is "Working to a Beat - Looks like you're at work".

~~~
bestnameever
more info: [https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2180223/google-play-music-
serv...](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2180223/google-play-music-service-
knows-how-you-feel-and-will-play-songs-to-suit-your-mood/)

------
pducks32
I love Apple Music and he perfectly captures my frustrations with it. Beats 1
and Curated playlists are my favorite thing yet there are so many simple
things I can't do. Reminders for shows. Easy navigation to shows I always
listen to. Being able to add something to my library which won't work because
some Curated playlist I have already have it added. I hope iOS 11 deals with
many of these problems. To know that someone else shares my frustrations gives
me hope that Apple does too.

------
dvcrn
I never went back to Apple Music after they wiped my playlists.

I used the 3 months trial and spent countless hours finding and adding all my
music back. Little did I know that if your subscription is interrupted, Apple
Music will wipe all your stuff immediately. I wanted to wait for the iOS10
version but as soon as i re-subscribed I just found all my stuff missing.

Other services like google music and Spotify keep your stuff in place and
don't actually delete anything.

I thought this might have been a bug, but no - my girlfriend just last month
switched to Spotify because of the same issue. She had to take a month break
from the service and when she re-subscribed her beloved playlists have been
wiped.

------
pawelkomarnicki
I switched to Apple Music after Google Play, and Groove (Microsoft Music), and
it's most frictionless library I used so far :-) I just don't give a damn
about polishing my playlists into oblivion, I just want some selection of
music, put it on my phone, shuffle. Curated playlists from Apple are the best
I've seen lately.

------
deeth_starr_v
Good for him. I cancelled my subscription with the launch of 2.0. Just awful
and buggy as hell.

------
tedmiston
Anyone else experiencing this page crashing and force reloading every 1-2
minutes in Safari on iOS?

~~~
dmlittle
Yes, but I thought it was the HN app[1] I was using

[1] [http://hn.premii.com/about/](http://hn.premii.com/about/)

------
cphoover
Should have hired you...

~~~
puranjay
I've never worked at a large company, but how is it that a single designer is
able to cook up something that looks and feels better than what a team of
talented designers at a $500B company came up with - for a clearly important
product?

~~~
supercoder
Because it takes hardly any of the real world constraints into consideration.
If you're designing for the 15 artists / albums in his mockup, then yeah ,
this is fine. But that's not the real world case.

~~~
eshvk
Also things like qualitative user testing, a/b testing would go into every
single pixel of his design. I am not particularly sure if the most important
separation of the music listening population is into hoarders vs nomads. You'd
evaluate that, make a decision. Things might get muddled there.

