Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

How to listen to all songs by an artist in the iOS 5 iPad Music app?

I just upgraded my iPad to iOS 5.

Needless to say I am disappointed by the new Music app. I'm stunned Lyrics are just *gone* altogether from that app.


But there's something I can't get my mind around. I just can't believe they left that out too, so I'm checking:

if I want to play all songs by an artist, no matter the album, what am I supposed to do?

It used to be that you could go to Artists then tap "All songs" in the album "column" so to speak. It's still this way on iPhone.

But on iPad I can only tap one song to start playing, and it will then play songs only from that album, not any song of the artist. It's like we can't "merge" albums of an artist, we have to choose an album or else.


Am I missing something here?

iPad 2, iOS 5

Posted on Oct 14, 2011 12:42 PM

Reply
Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Oct 14, 2011 12:48 PM

If I select an artist, then their albums and tracks are then listed, and tapping the play button top left of the screen (i.e. not selecting an album or track) starts playing all the tracks for that artist.

11 replies

Oct 14, 2011 1:02 PM in response to King_Penguin

Edit: you beat me to it. But I'm leaving my gripe anyway 😉


King_Penguin is right - if you hit the play button it will play all songs.


Here's where it gets awesome though: if you're already playing a song, you only have a pause button. What now? 🙂 Looks like you're hosed again.


I think they really messed up the iPod (Music) app. There is not one thing about it that makes me say "wow, I'm glad they improved that!" Rather I'm running into a bunch of "my god, why did they change that to this?!"


Message was edited by: Philip Smith

Oct 14, 2011 6:33 PM in response to aaSwebmaster

I found 2 workarounds:


1. Select Songs then in the search bar in the bottom right you can type the artist you want to listen to. It will make a list of all songs by the artist. This is a shuffleable playlist!


2. The app Planetary lets you shuffle songs by artist. Just click the planet of the artist you want and hit play. Interestingly, if you exit planetary while shuffling and open the music app, it keeps shuffling! You can skip forward and backwards and everything.

Oct 15, 2011 8:33 AM in response to samfromchampaign

Alas none of this works for me.

1. Too complicated, not to mention artists who have same name or name of artists that are in other songs and/or albums (yes all this exists)

2. I have a 16GB iPad vs. 60+GB library, so I stream all my music to the iPad from a Mac mini with Home Sharing. Planetary can only work with "local" (on iPad) music libraries so in my case it's useless.

Oct 19, 2011 9:57 PM in response to Philip Smith

Is it also true for eveyrone else that when playing all songs for an artist (via clicking the play having selected the artist) the currently playing song is not indicated by anything in the list?


When I click a song to play it there is a small speaker icon indicating the song that is playing - but if I just click the play icon to play all songs for an artist, there's nothing in the list of songs to show which is playing.


There is the title of the current song shown at the top, if you can be bothered reading it to find where you are in the list.

Jul 17, 2015 1:57 PM in response to Philip Smith

You are absolutely right, they DID mess up the iTunes music player for the iPhone. I hate it. I liked the last one, it worked fine! Sheesh. Developers went crazy trying to let you make your own "station" and add to up next and all that crap and you USED to be able to just go to an artist and hit play and it would automatically play all their songs. Boo. They were right on the solution, but there is no "play button" you tap the picture of the album, which is not intuitive. Bleh.

How to listen to all songs by an artist in the iOS 5 iPad Music app?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.