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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

PFox78 Author

Level 1

44 points

Sep 29, 2013 12:39 PM in response to Jimscriv

Does Ecoute have the "Group By Album Artist" function that you were referring to yesterday?

I'm quite liking Track 8 too; they did a really good job of it, especially if you like the visuals like the album artwork and the artist photo backgrounds.

PFox78 Author

Level 1

44 points

Sep 29, 2013 12:57 PM in response to Opal Bee

As for the others chiming in with your complaints, thanks! Please don't forget to call Apple and/or report this to their feedback page. Again, the more of us that do, the louder they'll hear we're unhappy with what they've done to the music app. It's the greatest hope we have to get back the functionalities we used to love.

What boggles my mind after all this is the decision-making process. Why in the world did they change it so drastically and remove so much key functionality? If they were aiming for "simplicity" and making things more "list" and "song" based, then why not have sorting features under an advanced tab in the settings app? I mean, iOS devices are more and more like computers, which do allow us the freedom to make changes to the apps and system as we like. (Even iTunes has significant amount of customization.) This doesn't mean everyone will or even has to use it, but those of us who want things a certain way certainly would.

Jimscriv

Level 1

9 points

Sep 29, 2013 1:00 PM in response to PFox78

Yes, the artist list works properly. It's actually not a list but an image of an album cover per album artist, displayed three wide across the screen. Which means you get twelve artists per page (and twelve covers). When you select an artist, you then get a similar display of 12 covers of that artist in alphabetic order. There are options to shuffle albums and artists. In ios settings you can choose to have the now playing screen pop up as you select a track (which for me is nicer than the original mini bar at the bottom of the screen). Nice swipe left/right options for track changing.

It looks good and is efficient. I'd actually prefer the boring old lists from ios6 but it's a lot more usable than the default ios7 Music app is now.

jon8979

Level 2

202 points

Sep 29, 2013 1:33 PM in response to Jimscriv

Does Ecoute support gapless playback? (I take it this is not automatic as the Lagu release notes made a point of it finally being supported.)

What about alphabetic jumplists for the scrolling grid views?

Sep 29, 2013 1:53 PM in response to PFox78

For anyone who's annoyed with the iOS 7 Music app's functionality but likes its look, you may want to check out Picky. The artists list still uses album artwork, but fits around 8 on screen at a time, and the artists' album views are displayed in chronological order without their entire tracklists, similar to how the Music app used to work.

I originally made this app because of the frustration I was experiencing with the old Music app, and the changes in iOS 7 only made things worse for how I like to listen to music. I think that anybody who prefers to listen to albums rather than individual songs will like it.

Some other improvements I've added include:

• When an album finishes playing it doesn't automatically start the next one.

• You can easily start playing just some of an album's songs (so you can easily play an album without its bonus tracks, for example).

• You can hide artists that have less than a certain number of songs.

• The AirPlay button is right there with the app's playback controls.

• You can just swipe up from the music playback view to see all of the songs that are coming up.

• Albums with multiple artists display each individual track's artist.

Sep 29, 2013 4:24 PM in response to PFox78

I couldn't agree more. I have 10+ albums from a bunch of my favorite artists (including PJ) and scrolling through every song for every album within the "album" sort is exremely tedious. I listen to music on my iphone every day and I've been avoiding the music app completely since the ios 7 upgrade. Apple's U/X folks slept big time on this one.

hans_123

Level 1

5 points

Sep 29, 2013 11:23 PM in response to ehaislar

Siri doesn't help much when you are on a plane, away from the internet ...

Jimscriv

Level 1

9 points

Sep 30, 2013 2:16 AM in response to jon8979

Ecoute as an alternative Music app: Sorry I don't know about gapless playlists. There is an alphabetic fast scroll through lists in Ecoute, though personally I have found it a little unresponsive, compared with others. You seem to have to touch the edge of the screen, wait for the A-Z list to appear, touch again, wait for a letter to pop out, then scroll (in a rather jerky uncontrollable way). So the feature is present but perhaps not well-implemented.

I've found another alternative app that copes with iTunes Match. It's the Last FM app called Scrobbler for ios. In many ways it looks and works like the old ios6 Music App - though with annoying extras like lists of albums for sale in iTunes appended onto the end of your own list of albums - and endless mentions of how many scrobbles every song has (which are of no interest to me).

Sep 30, 2013 4:50 AM in response to Thom_D

I've submitted feedback to Apple on this issue. I don't think it'll make a difference based upon lack of sensible response for past UX issues.

I have loved using apple products for listening to music since 2002! Now, with the current situation, I have zero desire to use my iphone 5 for listening to music. It's just not fun; it fustrates me that everytime I want to select an album after selecting an artist that I have to scroll through pages of text to find the album I want to listen to.

This flaw is not a simple mistake, but inconsiderate idiocy. It displays a simple lack of understanding as to what made the last software iteration "magical". It's little detailed issues such as these that cause me to worry for Apple's future.

Sep 30, 2013 9:42 AM in response to lessthanuthink

lessthanuthink:

I'm interested in your app, but wanted to ask you some things about it (functionality, features). Is there a way to contact you, I didn't see a way to message you through this site

Sep 30, 2013 10:30 AM in response to BigGoose62

Hey BigGoose62, I'm happy to answer any questions here if you'd like. I think sharing personal contact info here is frowned upon, but the offical support email listed within the app is pickyapp@cjoseph.com

Oct 1, 2013 5:24 AM in response to PFox78

I hate the Artist view in ios 7. Im not bothered so much by the look but by the fact Artist Albums are displayed as a massive list.

Ive complained to their feedback portal but doubt they will change it.

Oct 1, 2013 8:33 AM in response to lessthanuthink

By the way, I bought your picky app and im impressed so far. I dropped you an email via your site as there are one or two suggestions that could make the app a realistic replacement for the stock app.

Thanks for the recommendation.

amac03

Level 1

0 points

Oct 1, 2013 11:51 AM in response to PFox78

I have all these issues as well on my Iphone 4. Plus, I've tried syncing with Itunes now and only putting certain songs/albums/playlists on my phone and there are some serious glitches. Sometimes it doesn't include the whole album. I always have songs on my phone now that I've never even put on it. I've turned off the settings on the phone for "Itunes and App Store" to not show all Music purchases and have Itunes Match turned off. Plus in the Music settings I've turned off Show All Music as well yet I continue to have music on the phone that I don't want.

Another issue is when I want to play music via Bluetooth in the car. My menu on my car's interface continually shows every artist I've ever purchased thru Itunes as well, even though I've synced my phone 4 times since upgrading to ios 7 and have had the settings mentioned above turned off.

NO IDEA WHY IT KEEPS SHOWING ALL ARTISTS!

So close to jumping ship and going Android.

I've been an all APPLE products user since 2003.

My Iphone is primarily used for music and photos, and the MUSIC app is an EPIC FAIL NOW.

jawncook

Level 1

0 points

Oct 1, 2013 8:00 PM in response to PFox78

I'm just another person chiming in with a lot of the same that has already been said...I already sent Feedback to Apple shortly after I updated to iOS 7. I like a lot of the features on it, but being that I have come to rely on my iPhone as a music player and even bought the 64 GB iPhone to have room for as much music as possible, it is very frustrating to lose a lot of functionality I used to have.

I'm very into creating playlists and one common thing I've done for a very long time is have a "Listen Soon" playlist that I drop songs and albums I want to hear soon so I can quickly go to that and I am constantly adding to a list I call "Current Playlist." Along with taking away the ability to add an entire album to a playlist (must click song by song), iOS 7 has completely taken away the ability to go to another playlist to select songs to add. This has gotten very annoying becaus I used to go to my "5 Star Songs" smart playlist and simply add from there, but I cannot do that anymore.

It's extremely frustrating that the trade off for making their Music app look different they've completely taken away basic functionality that used to exist. For what I do, I need a Music app that lets me rate songs 1-5 stars, updates my iTunes with playcounts and the most recent times I've played...without that, I will have significant trouble managing my vast collection (I've been buying 1-4 albums a week each week for years and have over 10,000 songs on my computer). Is there an app that basically replicates what the iOS 6 Music app did and is compatible with iTunes (updates ratings, playcounts, recent time played, etc.)?

iOS 7 Music App sorting issues