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PFox78 Author

Level 1

44 points

iOS 7 Music App sorting issues

Hello there,

I'm starting this discussion to express my displeasure with some changes in the Music app that have removed some key functionalities that I had come to rely upon.

First of all, there are some artists in my library with many albums. In iOS 6, accessing those artist's albums was easy. You would click on the artist tab, go to the artist and it would show a list of the albums. Then, you could choose an album and go right to those songs. In iOS 7, this has completely changed. Now, there's no longer an albums view under artists. You have to scroll song by song to get to the newer releases.

For instance, I'm a huge fan of Pearl Jam and have 60 albums of theirs (9 studio, the rest all live records). Now, to get to the latest, I have to spend 30 seconds scrolling all the way down the list. That's not efficient at all. The way it was before — you get a list of albums once you click on the artist, then click on an album to get the songs — should never have been changed.

Second, I consider myself a power user and sort all my albums using the "sort album" tag in iTunes. Previously, that carried over both over syncing and iTunes Match. Now, it ignores it completely. Even my old, trusty iPod Classic still pays attention to this!

I understand that most people don't set their sort order, but for those of us who do — and have spent tons of time doing it — why is this no longer the case?

I spoke with a senior technician yesterday and let him know of these issues. He documented them and is sending them directly to a programming engineer at Apple. I have his name, phone number and contact info and intend to follow up.

He agreed that iOS 7 should be adding functionality — not taking it away! The other thing the senior technician said to me is that the more people call and complain about something, the greater the chance that it will be rectified.

I did so in a very calm, respectful manner and he was very receptive to my concerns. SO, is anyone else frustrated about this? IF so, please post here!

Also, my suggestion to anyone else who feels disappointed in this removed functionality is to call in to Apple Care support and express your concerns in much the same way i did.

That way, if we make our collective voices heard, they'll reintroduce the functionalities we had in the first place.

Posted on Sep 20, 2013 8:22 AM

Top-ranking reply

pd18

Level 1

0 points

Posted on Sep 20, 2013 8:34 AM

I have scheduled a call with a technician for this afternoon, and will discuss my concerns as well. Let's hope that if enough people raise the issue, it will be addressed. I will post a follow up once I've spoken with Apple.

View in context

445 replies

Dec 5, 2013 3:36 AM in response to PFox78

I agree that I hate the new music sorting options in ios7. I want to choose my music by artist -> album -> song. Having to scroll through the entire discography of an artist is a real pain in the ***. I have over 7 albums for more than a few artist. I don't want to scroll, scroll, scroll to find the right one. All Apple needs to do is change the functionality back to match ios6. What's so hard about that? Needing to resort to a third-party app to get the job done is just like saying using Google Maps because the apple maps doesn't cut the mustard.

Dec 5, 2013 3:49 AM in response to Smileypop

The new music player is a disgrace and whats worse is Apple seem oblivious to it.

I am now concerned that my music collection is all geared for itunes -

Next thing Apple may decide to mess with itunes and make it less user friendly

Its hard to trust a company that can really mess up something that was previously so good.

Dec 7, 2013 8:58 AM in response to PFox78

I have a various artists album. I can access the songs thru the album but nothing is showing in genres and by artist. The music app is very important to me and now it's screwed up.

Dec 7, 2013 1:27 PM in response to PFox78

A Couple of weeks ago Charles did an Update to the Picky app and now it has an Album tab. Great.
I really recommed it to everyone who wants an appropriate music player app.

For me what is still lacking in the Picky is a coverflow, but I'm sure Charles will take care of it.

Dec 7, 2013 2:25 PM in response to BeatrizVF

A search function in Picky would be great too. A great app to be sure and the only way I listen to music on my iphone now. A feature that used to be on the old iPods that was stripped away a while ago and would be another great addition to Picky would be album shuffle (play an entire album from start to finish and then randomly select another).

Dec 7, 2013 2:57 PM in response to Rawhouser

Glad you're pleased with it 🙂.

As for those suggestions: BeatrizVF, I'm not sure when I'll get to it, but I've been thinking about incorporating some kind of big-cover-art browsing mode. Rawhouser, search is also something on my to-do list, but album shuffle actually did make it into the last version – if you hit the Shuffle button at the top of the Albums list it'll pick one at random, play it in its entirety, and then move on to another random album 🙂. (And if you're filtering the Albums list by genre or track count, it'll only shuffle from what's visible).

Dec 7, 2013 3:52 PM in response to lessthanuthink

Hey! It's really awesome that you reply your clients, I mean, really!

I think that a album view with large cover art browsing would be killer! Maybe better than the coverflow!
It would be great if we had the choice to sort by Album title, Artist -> Album title and Artist -> Release Date.
If it isn't ask too much, I would love to get this browsing viewing option in the lists as well. I use playlists all the time 'cause it's the only way I figured out how to organize my labels correctly. Right now in one list I have 24 albuns, that in total are 286 songs. It's really a pain to find the song I want right now in my phone because they are listed one by one.

Thank you so much for reading this.

Dec 7, 2013 4:03 PM in response to lessthanuthink

Great to hear about the album shuffle (I didn't realize that was part of the last update but I'll definitely be making use of it know that I know). And I'll be looking forward to the search - thanks again for a fantastic app and for listening and responding to all of us here that are using it.

Dec 7, 2013 5:54 PM in response to Rawhouser

Downloaded track 8. Very nice

Music player!

Dec 7, 2013 11:32 PM in response to PFox78

Thanks for all the replies, and the original post. I too have had trouble with the iOS 7 music player.

The tendency to bring up a seemingly unescapable album art montage any time you move the phone is annoying. A workaround is to lock the phone in "portrait" orientiation (swipe up from bottom of screen in any screen). The album art montage seems to be activated by the phone thinking it's being changed to a horizontal orientation.

The annoying tendency to bring up a song or playlist "rating" screen if you accidently touch the top right area of the screen, or in my case, just put the phone in my pocket.I have not solution to this. I am not interested in rating every song I'm playing. I already like the song or playlist or it wouldn't be on my iPhone in the first place.

My music listening tends to be playlist-oriented. I set up playlists on the Mac, some thematically, 'blues" "straight-up rock", "Mellow", "driving", "running" , whatever. Some playlists are by artists, "Clapton", "kd lang", "Lucky Peterson", etc.

What I want the music player to do is VERY simple. Play the playlist I've started playing until it finishes or I change to something else, or stop it. Period. Don't ask me to rate it, add it to smart playlist, any of that. Just play my music.

In Music Player, Apple should apply the idea of "Simple Finder", and allow the set up of "Simple Music Player". Simple.

Dec 8, 2013 1:06 AM in response to Will_Howard

Picky seems to do what I want.

Dec 9, 2013 5:34 AM in response to PFox78

I'm just adding my voice to those above, in the hope that it might actually inspire a change.

The Artist > Album > Song menu system was perfect. It was fast and intuative. Apple why why why would you do away with that?! Now when I click on an artist I get presented with all the songs. Yeah they're grouped by album but so what? It's still just as much scrolling and hunting around. And if I did want to just see all the songs, the old system had a "songs" option when you selected an artist that listed songs alphabetically. We've lost a lot of functionality and gained absolutely none.

And I used to be able to view about 8 lines of text on the page (iphone 4s). So 8 artists or 8 albums or 8 songs. Now they've increased the size so it's only 3 1/2 lines. And why the tiny covers? They're too small to be useful, but big enough to get in the way.

Also the new covers that are generated for tracks that don't have one are unbelieveably ugly. Grey with slated text. Yuk.

And what's the obsession with rating? Apple, I chose to buy this music and put in on my iphone; they're all 5 star tracks. Every single of them are, depending on what mood I'm in. Are they seriously people out there who think "hmm today I think I'll listen to a one star track"?

Please please just give us the option of going back. Otherwise I'm defecting to Samsung. Seriously.

Dec 9, 2013 6:03 AM in response to Rocket1039

Rocket1039 - v well said.

Rating system is madness as music is so mood dependent.

The question remains - why have Apple made this terrible change.

After all they know what they have done. Don't they?

Dec 9, 2013 6:28 AM in response to themantheman

I've sent them feedback, but their feedback upload form has such a hopelessly low character limit that I couldn't even explain half of the problems I've found. Haven't heard anything back from them so far.

Dec 9, 2013 6:32 AM in response to Leigh Burne

Leigh,

Can you post a link to the feedback form?

We can all have a try!

iOS 7 Music App sorting issues