iOS 7 Music App sorting issues

Charles, thank you for your app and your hard work. You are now single-handedly keeping me an iPhone user. Thank you for understanding that choice empowers the user. Apple's MO lately seems to be to strip choice (and even long-existing functionality) away from the user.

Suggestion: Could it be an option whether to display album and song numbers? This would be a nice toggle to have as I don't really have a need to see those numbers. In other words, could that increase the number of artists/songs that fit on the screen? If so, could displaying artist or album art also be made an option when browsing? So for an artist where I have say 20 albums, maybe a couple more than 9 could fit on the screen if they were reduced to one line of text and no art.

Also: Do you happen to know why my phone seemingly forgets what music it was playing the instant I unplug from a usb/lightning cable like in my car stereo? I feel like this is another thing Apple broke with iOS 7 that didn't happen before.

Thanks again!

I just installed Picky as well, and I'm loving it. One workaround for the sorting issue with compilations in the Artist list is to sort by Album Artist, and then change the Album Artist field for all your compilations to Various Artists or Compilation or whatever. I'd prefer a dedicated album tab myself (and it looks like the next update adds that, so awesome), but this is a great workaround in the meantime.

Yes, a big thanks to you, Charles. Picky is the only thing that makes iPhone music still usable.

I really appreciate the continuing updates and improvements.

But it's paradoxical. All I really want is an app that simply works just like the old ios 6 default Music App - and the closer Picky gets to that, the better for me (while I'm also happy to enjoy any design or functionality improvements you make). How daft that a fully functioning App was deliberately destroyed.

In all my years of computer / gadget use I have never known a company wilfully break a key product in such a hooliganish and damaging way.

The other thing that upsets me is the refusal of Apple to acknowledge or discuss any bubbling problems until an out of the blue update at some point (or never). If there was a site somehwere where they honestly listed all known major gripes and issues and gave a little indication as to whether they were likely (or not) to respond and when, I'd feel a lot less angry. But their "we don't need feedback from users" attittude looks less and less cool and more and more arrogant.

Charles - My next upgrade request for Picky: I love that Picky streams from iTunes Match but I do miss the "download" button (for iTunes Match). Sometimes I need to load up a pile of songs to listen to when I have no online access. Currently, I can't do this without going back into the awful default App.

Hey. I read your reply and tried to use the iPad's native music app. Actaully I don't even use the iPad, but tried it out just to see the changes. And yes, you are right, it *****! Even more than the iPhone version, the navegation is trully garbage, nearly unuseable.

dadoum11 said: "The music app on ios 7 was designed for people who have 200 songs and play them randomly but not for music lovers." It's the most true fact about the iOS 7.

I'm having another problem now: I change a Artwork of a album here in the iTunes, synced my iPhone and then it didn't change in the iPhone! Why? It does not makes any sense!

After viewing the Charles list of update to the Picky and his motivation to make people like and use it even more is really, really awesome. Having those update I think I'll stick with the Picky app and let the Native Music app aside...

Complete waste of time (new music app) I spent hours renaming individual songs, albums, compilations, etc. & had it set out beautifully & then BANG! ios 7 swoops in & messes everything up!! Where has coverflow gone?? All there is now is a grid!?! The old sdaying, 'if it aint broke then why fix it' springs to mind. I used to love flicking through my nusic using coverflow & for the life of me i can't see any good reason to update it! Sorry, update would refer to it increasing in performance, looks, efficiency, etc. but the new set up is actually a step back! You can't call 1/2 of the features an upgrade/update as they're a step back! I understand that Apple wanted to give it a fresh new look but taking away features that we've come to rely on & that actually perform a specific purpose is just plain weird!! Surely there's some Apple designer/technician that could implement an upgrade method can will keep the features you want & discard those that aren't thus giving a more individually tailored & personal experince. I know it's impossible to cater for all tastes & needs but a quick search on google shows how many people are unhappy with 'some' of the features in the latest incarnation of iOS.Listen to the people who make you your money Apple!!

BeatrizVF, there's a possibility your problem with the artwork is related to what the Music App is now doing, which is not allowing the user to change certain aspects of song files purchased from the iTunes Store. For instance, as noted in this thread by myself and others, if you change the name of an album purchased from the iTS it will still show up on the iPhone Music app with the original name from the iTS. Perhaps the same is true for album art. I have not checked that myself.

A reminder to everyone posting for the first time in this thread. Please go to Apple's feedback page and send them a message about your dissatisfaction with the iOS7 Music app.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Question for Charles re: Picky: when I play something in Picky, will that show up in iTunes' Play Count? Only reason I ask is that I have a number of smart playlists that come from large compilations and box sets, where the playlist randomly picks a single albums' worth of tracks from said large compilation, then replaces them with new tracks as they get played.

Hi EP Meyer,

Yes, because all of Picky's playback actually goes through the system app any play count changes will be synced as well 🙂

– Charles

Oh, thanks again to everyone for the kind words 🙂.

TimmyK916 wrote:

…

Suggestion: Could it be an option whether to display album and song numbers? This would be a nice toggle to have as I don't really have a need to see those numbers. In other words, could that increase the number of artists/songs that fit on the screen? If so, could displaying artist or album art also be made an option when browsing? So for an artist where I have say 20 albums, maybe a couple more than 9 could fit on the screen if they were reduced to one line of text and no art.

Also: Do you happen to know why my phone seemingly forgets what music it was playing the instant I unplug from a usb/lightning cable like in my car stereo? I feel like this is another thing Apple broke with iOS 7 that didn't happen before.

Thanks again!

Hi Timmy, I'm not sure why it would be losing your place when unplugging from your car stereo. It must be an issue with Apple's underlying music playback system, unfortunately. As for your suggestion about having an option to further condense the lists, that's definitely something I'll consider. It might be messy to have so many view options, but maybe a sort of 'compact mode' toggle could be useful?

Jimscriv wrote:

…

Charles - My next upgrade request for Picky: I love that Picky streams from iTunes Match but I do miss the "download" button (for iTunes Match). Sometimes I need to load up a pile of songs to listen to when I have no online access. Currently, I can't do this without going back into the awful default App.

Hi Jimscriv, I'd like to add those buttons, but unfortunately Apple doesn't provide any way for third-party apps to trigger downloads of cloud music, only the ability to stream them. So I'm sorry to say you'll be stuck having to use the system app to manage downloads. Maybe in iOS 8 we'll see some more music API enhancements for developers…

– Charles

Thank you for the reply Paul Duke1.
Well, I hardly buy a song from the iTunes Store. I rather buy the CD itself, when there is no CD I buy it on Bandcamp, because the price is fair and I can choose the file format I want.

This Album I changed the Art was bought in Bandcamp, so I don't know why it isn't changing. In iOS 6 I did it dozens of times and no problem at all.

I really doubt that Apple reads feedbakcs, really. I mean, if they would, they would never *upgrade* a nice app to an unsea .

BeatrizVF, you quoted dadoum11 saying this: "The music app on ios 7 was designed for people who have 200 songs and play them randomly but not for music lovers."

This comment made me think a lot and I believe it's correct. Apple probably has had LOTS of complaints over the years from people who have 20 Beyonce songs, 20 Justin Bieber songs, and 20 Miley Cyrus songs and that's it (excuse my being quite out-of-it with my musical examples, I don't listen to that kind of music on my iPhone). THOSE people have exactly the opposite complaint from music lovers with a big library of classic rock/pop, world music, jazz, classical etc. Those people want to skip past the albums and just get a listing from their favorite artist and put it on random, no matter what album any individual song is on. And they want to see the cool cover art if they can." AND, those people are too dumb to realize they can do that very easily themselves by creating a smart playlist. Probably they flood Apple support with calls asking about how to do these things. Okay, I get it and there's nothing wrong with that. As I heard a musician say once, "music is most people's direct line to the spiritual so I'm not going to criticize any one else's taste in music"... within reason, of course. ;-)

BUT, for those of us left high and dry by Apple's new focus on "Bieber in the Cloud" as I'm going to call the overall strategy -- there are good lessons here.

1) Undoubtedly, the Bieber fans who are HAPPY with the new Music app have been on these boards over the past few years complaining, and on the support site giving feedback to Apple.

So give feedback to Apple! Maybe they will create a "classic" music app, or provide the settings (as they do in iTunes for the Mac) to make the software work the way it did in the past, if you so desire. So yes, feedback feedback give feedback, it worked for the Biebs, it can work for us.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

And 2) Even if Apple sticks with Biebs in the Cloud, as I highly predict it will, it should AT LEAST let developers like Charles/lessthanuthink have the tools they need to create great apps for those who DO want to listen to jazz and classical and classic rock... because for one thing those people probably proportionately have more money to buy these expensive Apple phones and such, and also because it's simple to do so. And because it's the right thing to do to treat real music lovers well!!! To allow Charles access to the data tags (album name, track names, etc) from the actual file from the user's computer, not the iTunes Store data, is a no brainer!

Personally at the moment I'm very satisfied with Picky and continue to highly recommend it. If Apple fixes the bug to de-link from the iTunes Store, I'll be using Picky and will never look back...

Paul Duke1, I acidently pressed enter without finishing the reply. My last phrase would be:
"I really doubt that Apple reads feedbakcs, really. I mean, if they would, they would never *upgrade* a nice app to an unusable one."
But them again there is the other side of people that use the music app, like you said. Just few musics they buy and *don't have time* to organize those few musics better with the Desktop iTunes.
Unfortunately I can't use Picky all the time now and left the Music App aside due the lack of the Coverflow and albums tab (That one should be enable soon, Charles said).
However I noticed Charles did an awesome job with the artists tab. Now the artists that are under an other artist album are separated.

Those people with just few songs in their iDevices are funny. This week I used one iPhone of a collegue of mine to have a look of his music collection and he did the same with mine. He then asked with astonished: "Wow, how do you have the art for all albuns?" He had just few albuns, that would take just few minutes to get them all.

But at the same time, Apple sells a lot of 64gb iPhones and 128gb iPads. I'd say most people that buy those are for store more musics.

The desktop iTunes is also full of flaws. The problem starts there, and get really worse in the iDevices. The lack of multiple artists and genres is really frustrating. Different from you, I don't listen a lot of Jazz, Classical and Rock. Electronic Music is the genre I most listen, and in that genre there is a lot of "Feat." and "Remix". The lack of a dedicated field for those two are really annoying. The pictures bellow show how this is a mess:

For you something similar should happen with Jazz. If I'm not wrong a lot of times a group of jazz is formed by multiple solo artists and just this time they are playing together. Maybe for you it's even morre messy than for me, haha.

Oh, something interesting: The first time I used the iOS 7 on my iPhone I complained about the Artist tab in the music app because Apple used images of the artists next to their name. But those images aren't from the albuns, I don't even know where Apple was getting those images, some of they aren't wrong, and some aren't nice. That's frustating as well, I don't want Apple making the decisions for me. Right now I viewing the Artists tab and all the pictures are from albuns arts. Much better IMO. Maybe Apple is noticing they went the wrong way?

I'm sure that Picky will soon will have the features I need, Charles is listening what his costumers want and improving it. Maybe the next update with the Albuns tab is what I need to left the Music App aside.

Hi BeatrizVF, yes I run into that kind of artist listing problem, sometimes with jazz and classical music, sometimes with a few hip hop albums or something like Santana's "Supernatural" album where every track has a guest musician playing with Santana.

What I do for simplicity is change the artist for ALL tracks (using your example) to "Stereotronique" and I put the additional info in the comments field, or sometimes in the song name. So a song called "Awesome Song" becomes "Awesome Song w/Northend". For me this makes it very easy because when I want to choose certain music I'm almost always thinking, "I'd like to hear some Stereotronique". Then I go under the Artist tab and all music by that person/group is right there for me to choose from. And when the song is playing I'll see that "w/Northend" to let me know who the additional artist is.

Yeah, a little time consuming at the beginning, but much simpler and time-saving in the long run, because I never have to deal with "album artist" tabs (and whether such information even shows up) and stuff like that.

The problem now is that with iOS7 -- as confirmed by Charles a few posts back -- the iPhone cannot display your changes to the album name IF the music was purchased from the iTunes Store. If it's purchased music, it displays the original album name from the iTunes Store. So that is screwing up my organizing system. (At the moment, I think iOS7 IS reading my changes to the Artist info and also the Song info, just not the album name -- so I am REALLY hoping this is a bug Apple will fix.)

The irony of this is that with these changes Apple is going to drive me to NOT buy music from the iTS. Unless this is fixed I'll go back to buying CDs and ripping them myself, or I'll buy from Amazon so that I can change the data to make sense.

And please, leave feedback. Leave feedback with each iOS update that doesn't fix this. It can't hurt and it might very well help. And thanks again to Charles for making it possible for me to use my $700 iPhone...

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Hey Paul Duke1.
Well, your advice is nice, thank you, I haven't thought about this. It may work, but then there is the other side. Labeling all those as Stereotronique will put it together with my other Stereotronique songs. However the song is also from Northend, shouldn't it be together with the other Northend songs? How can I decide between one and other? The proper would be both, however this is not currently possible. I still dream with a appropriate Desktop iTunes.

Fortunately I don't buy a lot of songs from the iTS, (right now I have just 19 songs, yet I'll buy more soon, but not so much) so I'm not having those problems. I only buy songs from iTS when there is no other way to buy it. CDs and Bandcamp are much better IMHO.
I'll leave a feedback then, Apple may read it though.

Well, the app's still totally f*cked. To try and explain the latest absolute joke of a bug I've discovered, I'll have to give a specific example - it revolves around the soundtrack to Days of Thunder, by Hans Zimmer but with a single song on it by David Coverdale.

In the artists list, if I go to David Coverdale, I can see his track sitting there all by itself, exactly as it should be. Good start. But, if I go to Hans Zimmer, the only track listed under him as an artist is the Coverdale song. None of the other tracks actually by Zimmer are shown, even though they're very much on my iPhone.

The album list is just as bad. If I select Days of Thunder the only track listed on the album is the Coverdale song, with none of the Zimmer tracks shown. Yet if I got to my playlist that includes the missing tracks, I can select them and listen to them no problem.

It gets better though. If i actually start playing one of these "invisible" songs by slecting it through a playlist, then expand the album track view buy hitting the button top right of the main screen... the song I'M ACTUALLY LISTENING TO AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME isn't even visible on the track list, like it doesn't exist.

How the **** can this be so screwed? It worked absolutely freaking fine before.