iOS 7 Music App sorting issues

I just want to thank lessthanuthink for Picky. I've been looking for a replacement music app since iOS 7 came out, because of the way they "redesigned" the artist view. I tried a whole bunch, and wasn't really satisfied with any of them until this one.

The music apps seemed to fall into two categories. Ones that seem like they are just a different front end to regular music playback, and ones that seem to have their own playback engine. For instance, with Picky, and some of the others, I can use the regular music app or Picky to control the music, but other ones like Audyssey, seem to play in different memory, where the stock iOS app would have something else playing. I didn't really like these types of players, as they all seemed to botch the gapless playback, and I have a lot of live concert recordings where the gapless playback is truly noticeable.

If you don't mind if I offer some suggestions for Picky, to make it even better :

- Add an option to play a playlist. I usually listen to albums (or concerts in my case), so this isn't too big of a deal for me, but I do have a few playlists. For now, I will just use the stock app for those.

- I'm not a huge fan of the icon. I'd like it to be more obvious that this is a music player. It's a bit cutesey for my tastes. Since this one of the four apps in my dock, I'd like it to look like a music player.

- iPad screen resolution support? Not too big of a deal, but would be useful.

Anyways, thanks again for the app. Well worth the 99 cents!!!

BIG Thank You to "lessthanuthink" for the Picky App recommendation! LOVE IT!

It is what I was looking for AND Gapless Playback works flawlessly.

I don't have an issue with the "group album by artist" (My OCD kicked in years ago and I already re-labeled everything correctly in my iTunes)

Picky does what Apple's music app should've done… Alphabetize the artist's albums!

Hi folks, thanks for the comments about Picky! I'm glad that it's helping people other than myself =).

I'm going to try to answer some of your questions and suggestions, here goes:

InNoHurry wrote:

PFox, by no playlist support, do you mean no playlist whatsoever or no way to import itunes playlists?

How do you sync the playcount?

Right now I'm not providing a way to browse your playlists in Picky, but if you start playing a playlist in the system Music app, you can switch to Picky and continue to control playback from there. Picky actually plays music through the system app, so you can switch between the two, and your playcounts are updated as usual. I've also started work on adding support for browsing and playing playlists for a future update.

JimScriv wrote:

[…]for me it is still a complete pain that it doesn't simply have an option to obey the "Group by Album Artist" setting. With classical music there are single albums that end up with 20+ different "Artists" (ie mixed combinations of singers/musicians) and there is no sensible filter level that doesn't then exclude artists who have released albums with just 3 long tracks.

So Picky - my wish list:

Essential: (1) Offer "Group by Album artist" as a setting (An alternative to the filter?)

Would be nice: (2) Include Playlists - with both a song and "By album" option

Dream: (3) Allow queueing of songs in advance

That's a good point about albums like that, and I've had a few people ask me about adding in an option to only use album artists (Picky uses a mixed artist and album artist list). I'm definitely going to add that option in, most likely for the next update. And as mentioned, I'm working on playlist browsing/playing support too – developers aren't able to edit/create iTunes' playlists, so any playlist creation would have to be isolated to just my app, which is also something I'm hoping to work on at some point, but probably a bit further down the line.

As for your dream option – queueing is something I really really really want to have too, but I want to make sure I do it right. I've encountered some logistical and technical hurdles (especially since music is being played through the system app), so I have to weigh the tradeoffs and come up with something that works well. Hopefully not too far down the road 🙂.

relayer35 wrote:

[…]

If you don't mind if I offer some suggestions for Picky, to make it even better :

- Add an option to play a playlist. I usually listen to albums (or concerts in my case), so this isn't too big of a deal for me, but I do have a few playlists. For now, I will just use the stock app for those.

- I'm not a huge fan of the icon. I'd like it to be more obvious that this is a music player. It's a bit cutesey for my tastes. Since this one of the four apps in my dock, I'd like it to look like a music player.

- iPad screen resolution support? Not too big of a deal, but would be useful.

Playlists do seem like a popular request 🙂 – and the first major feature I'll be adding next. As for the icon, it does seem to be a bit polarizing. Perhaps the music note monocle is a bit too subtle. Unfortunately it's really hard to balance looking 'like a music player' and standing out from the crowd. Something I've been thinking about, though. As for an iPad version – anything more than a quicky, scaled-up version would be a lot of work, so, unfortunately, I don't think it's something I'm going to get to anytime soon…

Anyways, thanks again for all the lovely compliments and useful suggestions! It's really rewarding seeing this kind of reaction to an app that's just been a hobby of mine for the last two years.

– Charles

Hey Charles, after voicing my complaints about this problem, following this thread and then hearing all the positive feedback for Picky, I had to go ahead and give it a try myself...I must say, great work.

Most of the other features I'd like to see are what have already been mentioned and you said that you're working on them - the absolute most important one for me is the group by album artist (a bunch of my albums are from various combinations of artists so having the whole album together is a must for me).

One other that I would suggest as a nice to have would be to view by genres (for instance, I have a ton of reggae by a lot of different artists so sometimes I like to just throw that genre on shuffle...then again, I think I could just create a smart playlist for that if we had access to the itunes playlists via your app so I guess that would work too).

Can't wait to see those changes. Thanks again for fixing this problem and responding to the requests your getting from us on this thread...Apple really should just hire you to fix their massive screwup on the music app.

Yeah they REALLY screwed up the iPod app big time. The whole reason I got an iPhone was that I could have a phone and an iPod all in one. I always search by artist because its the fastest way to get to what I want. Now if you have a lot of albums by an artist you have to go through every song!!!!!! That is such bull#%^*!! Apple you REALLY have to fix this or I'm getting a S 4 like everyone else. And I will be done with apple all together. Listen to all of us!!!

Hi Charles,

I just downloaded Picky too and love it. I just don't understand how apple stuffed this up so bad and you got it right. Oh well, good for you!

Great to see you are working on so many things people want. I just wanted to add my support and wishlist too.

1. Group by album artist - top move

2. Sort by Genre (and be able to choose all albums, all songs and shuffle like the old player) Sometimes I like to just chill to a mix of classical music.

3. Queuing of songs - this would be cool.

4. It would be good if you could change settings from within the app itself rather than having to go to Apple's settings app. But this is no biggy.

5. Playing podcasts from within the app. An extended wish for when you have everything else sorted : )

I love that I can scrub through long tracks again with better accuracy. About 15s jumps on a 2 hour track. Way better than Apple's 5 minute jumps.

Keep up the great work man. My faith in music has been restored.

I agree. The Artist view is the only one I would use and now its nearlly impossible to use for all the previously stated reasons.

One thing unmentioned in the first page of reading is the fact that now there is only about half the artists displayed... which means more and more scrolling to find what I want.

GET RID OF THE ARTIST PHOTOS PLEASE!

The more I use it, the less I like it really... For some reason iTunes Match decides to redownload songs already on my iPhone. So I end up with double and triple some songs regularly. The way to fix this is to delete all the duplicate songs (usually whole albums) and redownload, but as there's no delete album function, it's really tedious... I've discovered the best you can do is 2 at a time (on a 4S) 3 fingers won't fit it seems. But this is about as useful as the "three finger swipe to close 3 apps in multitasking" (where unless you get right in the middle of your open apps, it is essentially always reduced to 2).

The edit-select-delete all selected, or "x"ing things was the fastest way to remove and close things. Why would anyone make these tasks more difficult and time consuming? Baffling...

Message was edited by: DelboyWilson

Charles, one more thumbs-up for the good work. Apple owes you the cost of one customer.

And adding to the wish list ... after we create smart playlists and we choose to randomly play X songs among the most, or least played, or highest rated, whatever of that smart playlist, the iPOS7 music app and iTunes firstly (and secretly) sort all songs in alphabetical order of artist name. Go figure why. But for us with large collections that today just feel like listening to 50-100 songs, the shuffle is always skewed by artist alphabetical order. Unless we create complex playlists to re-shuffle the collection. Otherwise it's AC/DC, Ryan Adams, Bryan Adams, Adele, Aerosmith, etc.

So when creating your playlist functions, please make sure the shuffle does shuffle.

All the best!

I agree the music app in IOS7 lost functionality when it comes to sorting. I am a big fan of sorting by genre first, then album second. In previous versions of IOS this was simply done slecting "more" then "genre" then it would list all the songs by artist. At the top of the artist list was a "show album" option which would resort the list by the albums. This is particualry useful for compliation based CD's. I also liked it for looking at one genre of music at time with that CD feel. Meaning you can just tap a CD album cover and you listened to the tracks as if you just popped in a CD.

Apple...Pleasre restore the "show all albums" feature after the first sort selection in IOS7.

I want to know *** is apple doing or has done to correct the sorting and bring back the missing features for the iPad.

The OP was written on Sept 20 and it is already Oct 13?

So what kind of improvement iOS7 is?

I just fell in love with Apple products recently and had spend thousands of dollars to get MacBook Pro, iPad, and iPhone.

I dunno. I am beginning to regret it.

great thanks Charles

picky is just the right app for me, and it took the place of the new useless native app on my fixed app deck

there on the bottom of the screen.

i see many people ask for more options, and i must say: its so good because its so simple..

try not to over do it

I'm glad I;m not the only one so frustrated wirth what Apple have done to the music app. Its so annoying, especially when there was actually so little wrong with the previous version.

I hope they fix it, but I have a feeling its a part of their plan to deconstruct albums and have us thinking in songs /playlsits so we purchase in that format from itunes. But for serious music lovers that aint going to happen.

I will have to move to another brand if its not fixed soon, its too dangerous to try and use this music app whilst driving. Too much endless unnecessary scrolling. Such hard work.

Just chiming in saying I agree - totally relate to the PJ issue even but the same can be said about any artist with a deep catalog.

Bring back Artist>Album>Song.

Totally unrelated but that landscape coverflow collage is essentially useless - I can't ever imagine using that view to pick music. At least in iOS 6 landscape kept in sync with where you were at artist/album wise. Now everytime my phone goes sideways I see the same group of "A" albums. What's the point?