iOS 7 Music App sorting issues

Leigh Burne wrote:

rockmyplimsoul wrote:

Albums will also play successively, in chronological order by year released (assuming you've tagged them correctly).

Not always true. Queen's debut album is listed as being released in 1992 on my iPhone, even though I've tagged it with the correct release date (1973) in iTunes. Apple decided I'd rather use a reissue date than the original.

Yes this does seem to be the case ... the year displayed (and used for sorting) seems to be coming from the iTunes store, not necessarily the tag entry. So the album order may or may not be correct, but the track order within an album always seems to be correct.

I'm also planning another big update for January or February – I've still got lots of suggestions from people on this forum and elsewhere that I want to include 🙂.

Hi there, and Happy New Year!

I just bought your app after finding this thread ... very nice, thank you!

I had hoped that i would be able to filter songs, depending on how many stars they have, and also be able to change the sort order of playlists, so for example, that i might have all songs by the same artist or album next to each other within that playlist.

In searching for an app to do this, i haven't come accross any, which makes me think that either i organise and use my music in a strange way, or that there's something in the music file system / database that makes this hard to do.

Thanks again, and if you were able to implement more sorting, i would love it!

Cheers!

Hi, lessthanuthink,

I picked up Picky after hearing about it in a blog post discussing Apple's Music app failings. It is certainly an improvement! Can I make a suggestion? You're probably very busy and have no shortage of things to do, so thanks for taking the time to read.

• Managing active filters: I usually browse by album, and then filter by genre. It is unfortunate that the genre list is a horizontal scroll, because that means that everytime I fire up the app I have to scroll left and right ("scrub") to see what genre filters I have active. I would recommend adding a little "remove filters" button, or even better - if I select a genre and, for example, swipe down, that activates ONLY that genre. (If you haven't, I recommend trying Korg's "iKaossilator" app, which has a surprisingly efficient interface - or just search for it on YouTube - there are a few demos. Totally different app, sure, but they do some good ui things in it.) A little visual indicator on either side of the horizontal scroll might indicate, "hey, there are other selections active but hidden off to the left, or to the right."
• Now Playing: I love the way that scrolling the screen up reveals the track list. I'd love to have quarter/half-speed scrubbing, though.

This is a great app, thank you for all your hard work. I hope we can count on iPhone 5 screen-size support in the upcoming update?

Thank you! Picky does it for me!

Apple - you can forget fixing the screw-up in iOS7. I don't need the Apple music app any more.

It uses my playlists and the music library on my iPhone. What more could I desire!

Ah yes - the same for iPad 😉

I have the same issue and just submitted the following defect report:

"The iOS 7.0.4 update for my iPhone 5 is missing a key feature for using it to listen to music that had been previously available on all iOS major releases for the iPhone. In the Music app, from the list of Artists when I select one artist the app doesn't show a list of albums titles for the artist selected. Instead, it shows a really long list of all the songs for the artist by album. In my ~8 GB music collection (>1900 songs), for most artists I have multiple albums with the full song set & for several artists, I have ~20 full albums each with ~200 songs... With NO per-artist album title-only list it's a ridiculously long process to select an album to listen to that isn't at the start of the list (they're aren't even all sorted alphabetically by title!)."

I wanted to add the following paragraph but the web form didn't allow that many characters. :(

"Please quickly update the Music app to restore this missing feature. Usage of the iPhone as a music listening device is a major usage model for on-the-go, at home, and in the car. With no fix for this functional regression it's now easier to pull out & play an artist's physical CD album than to play it on the iPhone."

I'll call them later about it as well.

After several frustrating weeks, I found this post on Swhipy and the app has reconnected me to the music on my phone. Although I'm still very frustrated with Apple's blatant disregard for the users' experience, I'm grateful that I found your recommendation and can now manage my playlists on the go. Cheers.

Hi lessthanuthink

I'm picking up your app now, after just having read the several positive reviews here.

I hope you don't mind, I'm also adding a reply to the original post and copying/pasting the URL to your app in there, so that it shows up right at the end of the thread (as of today, Jan. 5, 2014). At least it should remain on the final page of the thread for a while.

The reason I'm doing that is I found it very difficult to find your specific post inside this mile-long thread where you link to it. I don't see a "Search this thread" type of option here in the Apple Support Community, which would have easily led me to it. (Maybe there is one and I missed it.)

Okay, now I'm going to actually try out your app!

Thank you so much for your efforts to help so many Apple customers who are struggling with these absolutely paralyzing changes.

Regards,

Ed

Here is a link to lessthanuthink's app which is getting a lot of positive reviews here as far as giving people a useful solution to many of these problems. Since I had a heck of a time finding the post containing the link to the app, navigating this forum from my iPhone, I decided to post it again here at the end of the thread - in case it might help some other people to find it faster:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/picky-filter-browse-play-your/id497110916?mt=8&u o=4&at=10l6Xt&ct=forum

I haven't tried it yet but I will now. It sounds really good. I appreciate the work you put into it, ltyt

Oh and I wanted to quickly add my voice to the hundreds of others frustrated and appalled by the drastic underhaul to the music app, too.

slaterk wrote:

Hi there, and Happy New Year!

I just bought your app after finding this thread ... very nice, thank you!

I had hoped that i would be able to filter songs, depending on how many stars they have, and also be able to change the sort order of playlists, so for example, that i might have all songs by the same artist or album next to each other within that playlist.

In searching for an app to do this, i haven't come accross any, which makes me think that either i organise and use my music in a strange way, or that there's something in the music file system / database that makes this hard to do.

Thanks again, and if you were able to implement more sorting, i would love it!

Cheers!

Hi slaterk, thanks, I'm glad you like my app 🙂. And thanks for the suggestions – I'll add them to my big list of potential features. Sorting the contents of playlists is one that I will try to get in in the near future, but I'm not as sure about filtering by rating.

Tango Charlie wrote:

Hi, lessthanuthink,

I picked up Picky after hearing about it in a blog post discussing Apple's Music app failings. It is certainly an improvement! Can I make a suggestion? You're probably very busy and have no shortage of things to do, so thanks for taking the time to read.

• Managing active filters: I usually browse by album, and then filter by genre. It is unfortunate that the genre list is a horizontal scroll, because that means that everytime I fire up the app I have to scroll left and right ("scrub") to see what genre filters I have active. I would recommend adding a little "remove filters" button, or even better - if I select a genre and, for example, swipe down, that activates ONLY that genre. (If you haven't, I recommend trying Korg's "iKaossilator" app, which has a surprisingly efficient interface - or just search for it on YouTube - there are a few demos. Totally different app, sure, but they do some good ui things in it.) A little visual indicator on either side of the horizontal scroll might indicate, "hey, there are other selections active but hidden off to the left, or to the right."
• Now Playing: I love the way that scrolling the screen up reveals the track list. I'd love to have quarter/half-speed scrubbing, though.

This is a great app, thank you for all your hard work. I hope we can count on iPhone 5 screen-size support in the upcoming update?

Hi Tango Charlie, thanks for your suggestions as well. Variable-speed scrubbing is already on my to-do list, it's just a question of when I can get to it 🙂. As for your ideas for genre filtering, I'll definitely think about them and consider how I could improve the horizontally scrolling list. One thing to note though: if you've got a bunch of genres selected, you can deselect them all by tapping the 'All Genres' button on the far left. Oh, and as for 4" screen support – are you using an iPod touch? It looks like there's an odd bug affecting iPod touch users where the app doesn't take up the whole screen – it's definitely working on the iPhone 5, 5c, and 5s. I'm trying to get that fixed for my next update though! 🙂

Keithjillings wrote:

Thank you! Picky does it for me!

Apple - you can forget fixing the screw-up in iOS7. I don't need the Apple music app any more.

It uses my playlists and the music library on my iPhone. What more could I desire!

Ah yes - the same for iPad 😉

Hi Keithjillings, I'm glad you like it 🙂. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be working on an iPad version anytime in the near future. Right now Picky is still just a hobby project for me, and since I don't really play music on my iPad it's hard to justify the amount of time it'd take (which would also take away from time spent on adding more features to the iPhone version). But it would be nice…

edwardjc wrote:

Hi lessthanuthink

I'm picking up your app now, after just having read the several positive reviews here.

I hope you don't mind, I'm also adding a reply to the original post and copying/pasting the URL to your app in there, so that it shows up right at the end of the thread (as of today, Jan. 5, 2014). At least it should remain on the final page of the thread for a while.

The reason I'm doing that is I found it very difficult to find your specific post inside this mile-long thread where you link to it. I don't see a "Search this thread" type of option here in the Apple Support Community, which would have easily led me to it. (Maybe there is one and I missed it.)

Okay, now I'm going to actually try out your app!

Thank you so much for your efforts to help so many Apple customers who are struggling with these absolutely paralyzing changes.

Regards,

Ed

Hi Ed, that's definitely okay! The more people spreading the word about Picky the better 😀. And I hope you like the app!

Anyways, thanks for the feedback and suggestions everyone! It's been very useful in improving Picky, and it's always nice to hear from people enjoying something you've made 🙂.

Cheers (and Happy New Year!),

Charles

as for 4" screen support – are you using an iPod touch?

I am, yes! Weird. Thank you for the responses!

Is there a better way to get in touch with you regarding Picky? I don't have anything to add, just curious (and also a little sensitive to this thread going off the rails)

Cheers!

Tango Charlie wrote:

as for 4" screen support – are you using an iPod touch?

I am, yes! Weird. Thank you for the responses!

Is there a better way to get in touch with you regarding Picky? I don't have anything to add, just curious (and also a little sensitive to this thread going off the rails)

Cheers!

Sure 🙂: you can email pickyapp@cjoseph.com (if you use the email button from within the app it adds some additional info including your device and OS version), and I also have a Twitter account set up @PickyApp

Agree - the re-design is a disaster. Two particular bug bears amongst many:

1. 'Sort by artist' is utterly useless if you have more than one album by an artist - except in the unlikely event that you just want to play ALL of that artist's songs in one go. It is basically impossible to play a particular album only via the artist tab - it treats all songs by that artist as one massive playlist. So if I want to play a particular album but can't remember its title I have to search for it by artist, find the album name, then go back and find it in the album list to play it. This is also the only way to shuffle songs on a particular album. Just rubbish.

2. The force-fed artist photos are worthless. Firstly, it means you only get four and a bit artists on the screen at any one time, so scrolling through your artists takes twice as long. Secondly, most of the pictures are totally indistinguishable from one another - so there's no point in them if you're having to use the text list anyway. One promo shot looks pretty much the same as another - that's one reason why artists have album art rather than shots of them lining up moodily on some waste ground in Tilbury. If you're going to have pictures, then why not just have one of the album covers (user preferred, if possible, but randomly selected if this is too much effort)? These are invariably distinctive: the rubbish promo shots are not.

Epic fail.

So...can anyone suggest any alternative music players - basically, one that is the same as iOS6.

Totally agree!!! Melomane people (music-lovers), like us, spend a lot of time doing specific playlist, looking for bizarre album art work, recording from LP into iTunes, etc, etc, etc...

Also I have been using iTunes since 2004, just for your notice!!! And updating every time Apple developers wants!!!

So guys... hear it from us!!! iOS 7 music app *****!!! Pretty much iTunes OS X Maverick...

You guys want to optimize so badly everything that you end doing a lot of mistakes... We love Art Covers!!! And most of all classifying every possible way we want!!!

Best

Viva la Música!!!

ltut,

First, thanks a lot for Picky! It's a great improvement over the train wreck that iTunes 11 / iOS7 has turned out to be. I still remember the slow horror as I realized that what I was witnessing in my iTunes was not some kind of bug, but apparently intentional wreckage.

I tried to write a longer review of Picky on the iTunes store, but it didn't "take" (too long I suspect). As a result I am trying to reach you here in this thread.

Picky is *almost* perfect. If I may make a few suggestions:

* Way back in the old days of iTunes, it was possible to begin the titles of some of your playlists with an asterisk and have them appear at the top of your list of playlists. Apparently iTunes recognized asterisks as being "letters" that preceded "A" in the alphabet and sorted accordingly. This made it possible to have two sets of playlists - a favorite "asterisked" list that was high-rotation at the top, and another list below that that was played less often. Some time ago this was made impossible on iTunes because the program no longer recognizes asterisks when sorting alphabetically. People with lots of playlists (like me) would really love it if we could enjoy this feature again.

* What I really want is the ability to select a Genre, select one of the Artists in that Genre, then select one of the Albums by that Artist, and THEN select one of the Songs in that Album. You've almost got it all, but not quite. Please find a way to return users' ability to wade through their song collection like this.

* Barring this, please find a way to allow the user to filter Artists by Genre the way they currently can do with Albums. Without getting too much into it, my music organization system really depends on being able to do this.

Thanks again, I will now go back to the app store and give this app a high rating!

Hi Werebat, thanks – I'm glad you're finding Picky useful. As for your suggestions:

• I don't think I'll be including a full on genre browsing mode, but I have been getting requests for filtering the Artists list by genre, which I'm aiming to add in one of the next updates.

• I'm just displaying playlists in the order that Apple sorts them in, but I'll think about adding some special sorting for asterisks. I also had an idea for adding in a way to mark playlists as 'favourites', which might solve that problem in a better way. In any case, I'll definitely consider it 🙂.

Thanks for the feedback,

Charles