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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

Best 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

Mar 13, 2014 2:46 PM in response to AxelF2

AxelF2 wrote:

in the genre overview for one specific genre it states x songs, y albums

and if you enter the genre it shows "no content". A real bug.

Try resetting (or maybe restoring) your iPhone, my iPhone 5 on 7.1 does not behave like this. Sometimes an iOS installation goes buggy, not necessarily iOS itself.

AxelF2 wrote:

And the best is, that album covers differ from itunes and the iphone for the same song ...

not very important, but not very nice anyway ..

Apple did start using their own version of artwork for some thumbnail pictures, but the Now Playing artwork should always agree with your library. If not then something is corrupted in your iPhone, which may require removing and re-adding all music (i.e. restore your iPhone).

I too am disappointed with the Music UI, but these particular issues you bring up appear to be a corrupt installation rather than iOS 7.x itself.

Mar 18, 2014 1:38 AM in response to rockmyplimsoul

rockmyplimsoul wrote:

Try resetting (or maybe restoring) your iPhone, my iPhone 5 on 7.1 does not behave like this. Sometimes an iOS installation goes buggy, not necessarily iOS itself.

It's the music player app, and restoring doesn't work. On my phone several albums are wildly out of chronological order becasue iTunes insists on using a reissue date rather than the original release date, despite the fact I've entered the correct date in iTunes.

Mar 18, 2014 7:56 AM in response to Leigh Burne

Leigh Burne wrote:

rockmyplimsoul wrote:

Try resetting (or maybe restoring) your iPhone, my iPhone 5 on 7.1 does not behave like this. Sometimes an iOS installation goes buggy, not necessarily iOS itself.

It's the music player app, and restoring doesn't work. On my phone several albums are wildly out of chronological order becasue iTunes insists on using a reissue date rather than the original release date, despite the fact I've entered the correct date in iTunes.

Did you bother to read what I was replying to, right above my comment? It had nothing to do with sorting issues.

John2398

Level 1

4 points

Mar 18, 2014 9:04 AM in response to PFox78

I bought my wife an iPod touch 5^th generation with iOS 7.1.

Most artists in my library have many albums.

I was shocked to learn that the Artist drill-down with iOS 7.1 is

Artist tab | Artists (artists only) | Albums (albums and songs)

instead of the original and useful

Artist tab | Artists (artists only) | Albums (albums only - no songs) | Album (with songs)

What a pain to have to scroll down endless times to reach the last album in the list!

Obviously, no one at Apple heard of the classic Coca Cola fiasco. If you change a major feature, at least keep it available as a setting option.

Be sure to submit a complaint at

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

I am returning the iPod touch for a refund and will use our old iTouch until Apple fixes this disaster.

Mar 18, 2014 3:59 PM in response to Leigh Burne

Well, I am happy to discover that in 7.1 Apple HAS indeed fixed the metadata bug so that for music bought from the iTunes Music Store the Music App (and 3rd party apps also) will now display the information as changed by the user!

I posted erroneously on this a few days ago, saying this bug had not been fixed, but it turned out that if I deleted the music from my iPhone, then moved it back to the iPhone from my laptop, the data shows up as modified. So for those of you who are having problems with re-issue dates and so forth, I suggest deleting that music, confirming that you have changed the "Year" in the metadata to what you want it to be, and then re-loading the music onto your iPhone. It worked for me.

I still have problems with the re-design of the Music app in iOS 7 -- I don't like the ugly Artist art which it chooses, I don't like the way it lists albums with all the songs, rather than just the album name as in iOS 6.

But what this fix means is that other, 3rd party, apps which have a better interface, now work pretty well for me. For those who hate the individual listing of songs that you now get under the Albums tab, I still highly recommend the app "Picky", which I think is still only $1. "Lagu" seems pretty good to me too.

Hope this works for you guys too. I am really glad Apple seems to have fixed this. And I have to credit Apple customer service for my experience today. Rather than posting more feedback, I decided to do online chat with CS so that I could send them screenshots of the problem. The CS rep said she thought this was an annoying problem so she had an actual higher up tech rep call me literally two minutes later. It was while working with the tech rep that I discovered I needed to re-load the music to see the changes in 7.1. So, after bashing Apple quite a bit in this thread, I also want to say that in the end they handled my particular complaint very well. Now let's hope someone else takes over the design of the Music app... But in the meantime I'll be using Picky, and back to listening to music more often on my iPhone. 🙂

Mar 19, 2014 1:43 AM in response to Paul Duke1

Paul Duke1 wrote:

I posted erroneously on this a few days ago, saying this bug had not been fixed, but it turned out that if I deleted the music from my iPhone, then moved it back to the iPhone from my laptop, the data shows up as modified. So for those of you who are having problems with re-issue dates and so forth, I suggest deleting that music, confirming that you have changed the "Year" in the metadata to what you want it to be, and then re-loading the music onto your iPhone. It worked for me.

Doesn't seem to have worked for me, I still have albums totally out of order, despite having the correct release date entered in iTunes. And I did a full wipe and restore of all my music last night.

All 7.1 seems to have done is switch it so albums are now listed in reverse chronological order, thereby removing my ability to listen through an artist's output in order of release date, one of the few things I actually liked about the new music app (well, when the dates weren't totally screwed).

Mar 19, 2014 2:22 AM in response to Leigh Burne

Hmm, that *****!

My main suggestion is to go to Apple support, get on chat with a rep, and see what they can do for you.

But, might as well ask a few questions.

What does "totally out of order" mean? The albums display in a random order? Is there no pattern to the order at all, not even alphabetical?

Do you get the same behavior in a free 3rd party app like Lagu?

Are you using iTunes Match? If so, do you get the same issues when you turn it off?

All I can tell you is that it is working for me now. Albums are ordered by the "year" field under get info, and if I change that field, it changes the order.

Good luck!

Mar 19, 2014 2:34 AM in response to Paul Duke1

The albums are mostly in order, except that some are apparently being sorted using reissue dates instead of the original release dates that I have entered in iTunes. Example - I go to Queen as an artist and all their albums are nicely in order, except their first two albums, Queen and Queen II, which appear just before (or after, now that the chronology is backwards) their final album Made in Heaven. They're being sorted using a release date of 1994, which I imagine must go with some re-release they had, even though I've entered the correct dates (1973 and 1974, respectively) in iTunes myself.

I'm not particularly familiar with the range of third party apps available, but the free ones I know of don't sort albums chronologically, so I can't really check if the problem is affecting them as well.

No, I'm not using Match, unless it's switched itself back on at some point. But I doubt that as I've had this problem ever since iOS7 came out, and it was definitely switched off initially.

Mar 19, 2014 7:54 AM in response to Leigh Burne

It appears Apple has started utilizing the Release Year, which is not exposed in iTunes, to sort albums. Recording Year is what is exposed in iTunes, that you can edit within iTunes.

The Music app is turning into a hot mess. I've been a big fan of the Match service, but with what they've done to Music, which used to be by far the best player out there, I don't see myself renewing Match this autumn. It looks like I'll be using an alternative.

Mar 19, 2014 10:44 AM in response to Leigh Burne

Well, all I can tell you is that under 7.1 I can now change the "Year" field using iTunes and that changes the order in which the albums appear on my iPhone. So it seems you're running into a bug or conflict somewhere.

Out of curiosity, are the two albums that you can't change ones you purchased from iTunes Music Store? Those are the ones that gave me the most trouble under 7.0.

In my case, I had to delete the albums and then re-load them to get the new 7.1 functions to take effect.

Also, check in Settings>Music that "Show All Music" is turned off. I think it's these iCloud settings that cause the original metadata to take over in some cases.

Here's a workaround for you (which I use anyway), if you don't mind the trouble. For artists where I have a lot of their albums, I put the year of recording at the beginning of the album name. I find that makes things much easier to find.

Then get the app Picky, which costs $0.99 and has a setting to show your albums by "Album Title" (not release date, as with the Music App) and also "Release Date (ascending)" and "Release Date (descending)".

I'm attaching a screenshot of what Picky looks like with Album Title chosen as the sort order. Since I have the recording year at the beginning of the album name, it puts them in proper, ascending, order.

Nota Bene -- I am finding a little bit of funkiness with Picky and 7.1 (I have one album, purchased from iTMS, where Picky is not reading the "Year" field correctly, although the Music app is reading it correctly). But the problems are very minor and the developer, Charles, is a really nice guy who is very responsive to comments and checks in on this forum once in a while. I highly recommend his app as an alternative to the Music app. With this setting chosen -- sort by "Album Title" -- there are no problems at all.

Good luck, PD.

Mar 20, 2014 2:18 PM in response to PFox78

I agree with the original post. When I upgraded to ios7 I lost my favorite music player

function which was the option to sort albums by a. title,artist,genre,year or rating and then by b. title,artist,year or rating. Now I have few choices for sorting. It is now very hard to organize my large collection of albums. I hope apple will help by restoring the lost function.

PFox78 Author

Level 1

44 points

Mar 20, 2014 2:50 PM in response to eryximachus

Thank you to those who are keeping this thread alive. I wrote the first post when iOS 7 came out and thought that Apple would be responsive enough to listen to those of us who wrote and called in. But, alas, no. In fact, with the order in iOS 7.1 now in reverse chronological order, it's even worse.

Yes, Picky is tremendous and thank goodness for Charles's work on it. For those of you who miss the old player and don't have it yet. Get it. For a measly dollar or two it makes a world of difference. Without it, my once trusty iPhone 5 would've been nothing more than a paperweight. Still, there are many limitations that Apple imposes on third-party music players and you cannot do, such as download/delete tracks from the cloud, etc.

At this point, I don't know what else we can do, but I'm wondering if anyone has any connections to anyone at Apple. I tried emailing Tim Cook about this but obviously there was no response.

Over time, the issues became worse. I have iTunes Match and before, everything that I managed on my PC would show up perfectly on the device. Now, none of the changes made on purchased tracks carry over. Why? Not to mention the fact that before, I could at least delete entire albums or artists on the device. Now, you have to go song by song. It's utterly attrocious.

I'm kind of at my wit's end getting lame responses from Apple saying, "we understand your frustration" but nothing gets done. I'm not saying they can't keep it as it is. Just give us the OPTION to change it in the settings to how it was. If Charles, a single developer with limited resources, can give us these tools, why can't a multi-billion dollar company like Apple with thousands upon thousands of employees?

Does anyone have any ideas as to how we can get this to people who matter and can make a difference? I really don't want to switch platforms, but if iOS 8 continues like this, I'll reluctantly have to consider it.

PS: A note for Paul Duke 1: Paul, if you label the fields exactly the same for the albums in the "sort album" category in iTunes, then it'll appear the same but without the years on it. Just sort by "album title" in Picky.

AxelF2

Level 1

0 points

Mar 21, 2014 12:05 PM in response to rockmyplimsoul

Here is back the german guy with the genres/album issue:

AxelF2 wrote:

in the genre overview for one specific genre it states x songs, y albums

and if you enter the genre it shows "no content". A real bug.

rockmyplimsoul replied:

Try resetting (or maybe restoring) your iPhone, my iPhone 5 on 7.1 does not behave like this. Sometimes an iOS installation goes buggy, not necessarily iOS itself.

I restored my iPhone:

- During the restoring routine roughly 10 GB of music data (only a part of my music, selection made per playlist and genre) was copied to the iphone. But after the restore the music was not accessible any more on the iphone.

- After chosing the "not music sync option" and again "sync music via one playlist and the genre children's" the 10 GB were copied one more time to the iphone, this time it was accessible again ...

Result: Same bad behaviour of the music app as before (my brother has the same issue ....):

- The genre children's shows one big album "various artists" which are definitely not labeled with the genre children's

- Other genres like "easy listening" are displayed as possible choice, when entering the genre ist shows "no content". But this kind of music is definitely ON the iphone

So I have this request to apple:

- Please check your music app for bugs:

- Install a 20 GB music library and sync only half of with via playlist/specific genre

- Check the choice via genre

- And please readd the feature of full choice of album title within a genre

I really have the same thoughts like PFox78

If Charles, a single developer with limited resources, can give us these tools, why can't a multi-billion dollar company like Apple with thousands upon thousands of employees?

As the rate of new iPhone buyers are slowing down, please deliver to those who already payed for the device.

Mar 23, 2014 11:11 AM in response to AxelF2

I think many of the sorting issues can be fixed by creating playlists in iTunes and sorting them how your prefer. When synced with your iPhone use playlists instead of Album, Artist, Song.

LumpyDW

Level 1

0 points

Mar 24, 2014 8:20 AM in response to David J. Reeves

Agree, It is frustrating to watch videos from one artist when they are not grouped that way. Also if you try to play a video in Music app it does not play horizontially. When you turn the phone it only show the ablum cover flow. Also frustrating.

iOS 7 Music App sorting issues