iOS 7 Music App sorting issues

I just downloaded Lagu, and was instantly again able to do everything I used to be able to do in IOS 6 Music. (I don't use iTunes Match so the absence of it doesn't bother me,) It took under 5 seconds to sync up with the 6500+ songs on my phone.

Lagu feels like coming home after a long trip -- everything is familiar. The Queue is intuitive.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Thanks for the advice re Track 8. I'm amazed that a player can access Match. If this one can do it, why not the others?

I downloaded Track 8 on your advice. It's ok but fails in many areas:

It doesn't offer a fast scrub through the artist alphabet. Which means it takes AGES to go from A to Z if you have lots of artists.

To make it worse, it doesn't respect the "group by album artist" setting. This is a nightmare with some classical albums as each track can have a different mix of artists and these all get listed separately. My artist list seems endless.

No options for sorting. In fact, minimal setting options of any kind. (What is the problem with offering personal choice?)

It has potential but is currently as poor for me as the default app - just a different list of problems. Is such a simple thing as a basic music player really do hard to get right?

Ah yes! That was well hidden!

Well it goes up 10 points for that - but I think the "Group by album artist" lack still kills it for me. Some single albums generate 20 + "artists" for me.

However, if that was dealt with it would be a strong contender

Thanks for the reference to Lagu, just downloaded it. Looks great! However, when I try to create a new playlist, try to type in a name for the playlist and nothing happens. The keyboard doesn't come up, the screen doesn't react. Trying this on my new 5c. What am I doing wrong?

Now if someone would add audiobooks to one of these third- party apps so that chapters are listed the way they were in iOS 6.

Apple Forums

After recommending Lagu, I also discovered the inability to save playlists. I'm assuming it's maybe a bug? Maybe the app never updated for ios 7? I have since searched around and found (possibly?) the closest match to the old ios 6 music app. Check out "Swhipy"

It does cost $2 to make it completely usable. I've used it for only a few days and, in my opinion, it's better than Lagu because you can actually save playlists. Again, I'm no expert. I just searched the App Store and kept downloading apps until I found what I deem to be a nice substitute for now. The only annoying thing with Swhipy is that it organizes any "the" bands, for example like "the Beatles", under "T" rather than "B", which I'm getting used to. Oh well, I'd rather deal with that than any other music app's organization I've seen thus far. It isn't perfect, but it may be the closest. Feel free to suggest other apps.

I should mention that what I look for in music apps is easy navigation and the ability to make quick playlists without much hassle.

Like someone suggested earlier, I think what we should all do is send feedback directly to apple. If enough of us share similar frustrations with the changes in ios 7, then I think they'll possibly make some tweaks.

Does anyone else miss being able to double tap the home button in order to pause/play their music? The swipe feature doesn't always read my swipe on the first time and when I'm using the keyboard and want to pause my music I can't simply swipe up because the keyboard is in the way. I used to be able to double tap and pause then go back to typing very quickly. Now I have to exit my text messaging app, then swipe, pause, then go back to the text app. Yet again, this is another example of ios 7 making one take a few more steps to pull of functions that were faster/easier to do in ios 6.

I definately agree to every word you have said. I recently updated and thought it would make things easier as Apple promised. To my surprise the only thing i changed back to Apple from Samsung was for my convenience in listening to music (headphones, car, everything). When i changed back from Samsung to Apple, it was still ios6 and that was great. The only thing i am complaining about in ios7 is their music app. I have found third-party music apps but they all cost money and i dont find it reasonable to pay for something which I know Apple can do so brilliantly. I HOPE THIS REACHES THE APPROPRIATE CHANNELS, PLEASE CHANGE IT BACK !!

I primarily listened to my music by genre. In ios 6 I could select the genre, then seletc shuffle at the top to listen to all the music in that genre. Or I could select an album and just those songs that are a part of that genre would show.

After updating to ios 7 it went like this:

1) Selected "genre" at bottom of screen.

2) Noticed several albums that are a part of the same genre appear as separate selections under erroneous genre listings.

3) Selected the genre I wanted.

4) Noticed all songs are sorted automatically by artist for some reason and I can no longer view by album or song name.

5) Tried but failed to find the "play all" or "shuffle all" options. Realized those options no longer existed and I must choose an artist listed in the genre.

7) Selected artist (wasn't I trying to select genre?)

8) Noticed all songs listed for that artist appear under this list (even those not in the genre I originally selected).

9) Backed out and selected different artist (still in "genre").

10) Songs for that artist and songs from a completely different artist appear. None of these songs are for the genre I originally selected.

11) Cursed Apple

11) Selected "Playlists" at bottom of screen.

13) Created a playlist for each of the genres I wanted to listen to while cursing apple.

14) Tried but failed to find a way to delete the "Purchased" playlist.

15) Submitted feedback to Apple.

So basically there is no longer a point to selecting a genre. There is almost no point in using the music app at all anymore unless you're willing to create a bunch of playlists in order to listen to your music the way you want to. I also hate the new "button" placements. It's too easy to hit the wrong thing. It needs serious reworking.

This may be an iTunes Match issue, not Music app, though I've only had it happen since the update: I keep having songs and albums disappear on me. I've downloaded a bunch of albums a bunch of times and a day later a large and random amount has disappeared. Also some songs download multiple times, so I have 2 or 3 copies of the same song. Anyone else getting this issue?

Ohhh no...... I also use Genre to sort music. Saw your post and went and tried 😢

This is really not good. I have lots of classical music and sometime like to just hit shuffle on a genre.

At least my new favourite music app does everything like IOS6 used to. As long as you don't use Match which I don't.

I like nearly everything else about 7, just need to fix this. Please give us a bit of flexibility with the music app apple. After all this is what made you so big......portable music!!

I'm with you on this one. I have called apple care about this 3 times already to let them know about the new music app. I also have a tone of music. I have 56 Nine inch Nails albums that give me a hand cramp thumbing through the new hybrid style artist list and I takes for ever to get to the newest albums. Two of the NIN albums have 40 tracks. Even doing a search under albums is a pain. Especially while in traffic. It's just to hard to use. Apple please!!! Just make it the same format as the old IOS version in the new ios7.0.3 that I'm sure work diligently hard on for this week. This is truly the first time I have been unhappy with my favorite brand. Please go back to what works with the music app. Please...

The music app is terrible now. They went and ruined the functionality of it completely. Apple if you fix anything next it needs to be the music app. Just put the old IOS6 format back and have a totally separate app for the iTunes Radio. Keep to what works and don't do jarring format overhauls to your software that turn apple fans off. The new app is way off the map. Some of the artist I have, have 30 to 60 albums!! Repeating and shuffling albums is way to much work to figure out. We were thinking about getting a Mac book pro this year and our first iPad. But my wife and I are reconsidering and are going to see if you step and fix the music libery and app issue first. So you may be losing 2,000.00 of business from us this year. We wanted go to Mac and leave out PC. Sorry, but This is really put some reservations in our plans. Please fix the music app.

As with most everyone on this forum, I'm having the same issues with music sorting in iOS 7. It is such a mess and quite confusing that I really regret updating from iOS 6. What is bugging me most, and there are quite a few things bugging me with iOS 7 is that iTunes is placing some of my music in two categories or genres. I may tap on R&B and find an album that I tagged as Jazz. I will find that album or artist in the Jazz genre, but it will also be in the R&B genre. I have deleted those albums and added them back making sure they were tagged correctly-- not only in iTunes but also in the original file. All to no avail. Does anyone have any resolutions to this specific problem or it this just another issue that Apple needs to fix? 😕

After a bit of research I've found one alternative app that is usable: Ecoute

It IS iTunes Match compatible, does sort alphabetically, manages to fit lots of album art into a fast scrolling list etc. No song queuing and I'm sure it's missing other things. But it is a decent workable alternative to the vandalised default app.

Another iTunes Match compatible app you might want to look at is Car Tunes. Also seems usable though its lack of normal visible controls is a bit annoying if you're not driving a car!