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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

ketjak

Level 1

0 points

Sep 20, 2014 1:55 PM in response to Justin J M G

Wow... All I want to do is sort my albums alphabetically... One year on, and we still can't do it?

zeb3

Level 1

4 points

Sep 28, 2014 2:30 PM in response to ketjak

Lads, please use the link below to send your feedback to Apple, I know it might not change anything but worth trying.

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

I am using the free app called Lagu, if you have read the 30 pages of this thread you probably have heard about it, I am pleased with it, you should try.

Oct 6, 2014 2:45 AM in response to zeb3

As if this joke of a music app wasn't bad enough using the phone's touch screen, they've implemented it the same way in CarPlay. At least when using the phone directly, you can quickly scroll down and find the album you're looking for. In the CarPlay implementation, you get the same list of ALL the artists songs, but with less of the on the screen at any time, and you can't smoothly scroll through the list with a quick swipe on the screen as it only jumps through one page at a time.

The whole point of CarPlay is to make user interaction quick and simple to avoid distracting the driver. They've failed badly at this point.

Oct 6, 2014 10:41 AM in response to Braindome

zeb3. I also used to use Lagu but it no longer works with iOS 8.

The app will open and update the library but will not play music.

I have E-Mailed the dev to ask for an update but it looks like my request fell on deaf ears.

Oct 6, 2014 11:46 AM in response to crookadile

Others are reporting the same thing: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1782387 and http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1774069

The lagu app does not appear to have been updated since July 2013

Nov 22, 2014 7:01 PM in response to Justin J M G

I realize that activity on this thread is now slow/dead, but I have also been frustrated by a lot of these issues, and the lack of a suitable 3rd party solution. Ultimately, I decided to develop my own.

The result is Cesium, and I believe you may find it addresses a lot of these concerns.

You can check it out at https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/cesium/id924491991?mt=8

It is available for $0.99 for a limited time, and then $1.99 after. I hope it helps!

Dec 11, 2014 11:18 PM in response to PFox78

I am personally getting sick of Apple and paying an apple premium for their products and services.

Since Jobs died, they have CONSISTANTLY shown themselves to be poor decision makers and planers who DO NOT care about their custormers. For me, it started when they got rid of google maps and gave us the childish and horrable apple maps in its place. Now they destroy our beloved music app and do not fix it a year later.

I was using IOS 6 on my iPhone until a week ago! I didn't upgrade because I stopped trusting Apples decision making and figured they would take away more functionality than they added on. Turns out I was right, because now I see that even after two IOS updates, they have STILL not fixed this issue.

There was a time when paying the extra cost for an Apple meant you were paying for quality, you were paying for the design from a company that once made progress in their products and did things intellegently. Those days are sadly gone. Apple is in decline, each IOS update and operating sytem update takes two steps forward and three steps back. At least with PCs, you don't have to deal with these updates EVERY FREAKING year.

For me, I am going to start going back to PC's and choose a smartphone from a company that is more stable. Apple is in decline and there is no longer a reason to pay such a high price from a company that doesn't give a CRAP about it's customers.

I used to LOVE listening to music on my iPhone. Now I have to use 3rd party apps.

Dec 12, 2014 12:24 AM in response to PFox78

Can anyone reccomend a phone that had a simular music set up to the old iPhone? I am ready to drop apple and go back to using PCs. It's the end of an era, apple used to be such a great and inovated company, but they are really taking another nose dive into the toilet. You simply can not trust this company to make good decisions with their operating system, products or IOS updates.

ac1985

Level 1

0 points

Jul 13, 2015 8:33 AM in response to PFox78

Hello,

I am experiencing all the same problems, I am most frustrated with artist albums not being in alphabetical order (by year instead), albums listed with all songs (instead of just an album )and having to scroll through each song to get to the next album and how each album plays in order and does not end at the last song.

I too have many albums by the same artist and am a bit of a "collector" and have spent many hours naming and organizing all the music (albums, names, artists, etc) in iTunes so it is in order when I put it on my iphone6. The music app has rendered all this work useless.

Eventually the boards got too daunting and there was too much to read.

Here are my questions:

-Did anyone have a solution for these by changing something in iTunes or was it simply to download another app?

-What if I highlighted all songs/albums by an artist, and manually deleted the year (that is being used to sort).

-Would this force them to be in alphabetical order? If all songs/albums have no year will it default to alphabetical order?

-Can I highlight more than one song with a different year and change them all to no year? If so, could I do this to all songs in my iTunes so they can be in alphabetical order?

Thanks!

rigbysam

Level 1

4 points

Jul 17, 2015 9:24 PM in response to PFox78

I have a large library and I sort primarily by year. Here's an example of what I am experiencing with collections that I've ordered through itunes. I have downloaded The Beatles 1963 Bootleg Recordings and have edited the release date to 1963 to reflect it's proper chronological history. On my computer that's fine, however when I download to my phone the 1963 collection is sorted as a 2013 release (not 1963). So in short all of my manual editing for release dates are being ignored by my phone. Same thing when I downloaded The Who's first album. It's as a sorted as a 2014 release and there's no way to get around it. VERY frustrating!! My preferences are even set to "manage library manually" but it doesn't apply to my iphone at all.

Also proper artwork that I've manually edited into my library won't show up on my iphone. Whatever cover art itunes has, that's what you get. Again on my computer everything is fine. Not happy at all with this iphone and it's horribly designed music app.

iOS 7 Music App sorting issues