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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

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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.

445 replies

Sep 20, 2013 8:39 AM in response to PFox78

I'm with you. I love iOS 7 but absolutely hate the new Music app.


The "Artists" tab that no longer shows a list of albums is one of my main complaints too. It now shows a list of all songs grouped under albums, which probably makes sense if you never buy complete albums, and have 10 songs on your phone, but not for serious music lovers. I have to scroll now through hundreds of songs just to get to the right album. By the way, albums are no longer sorted alphabetically. I suspect that they are shown in the chronological order. Guess what, I have about a hundred of Keith Jarrett albums, and I don't really remember their release order.


Lost functionality makes me feel very frustrated. You used to be able to tap and hold a song or album and see its complete name (that often does not fit into the screen). Not anymore. This was really important if you have a lot of classical music on your phone, as many tracks have very similar and long titles.


Lastly, you cannot delete entire albums anymore, you have to do it song by song.


Seriously, somebody has to undo everythings that was done to the Music app.

Sep 20, 2013 8:59 AM in response to ehaislar

Search/using Siri is great provided you know what you want to listen to. For serious music lovers often you will be scrubbbing through music to browse/select an album, and there is just no efficient way to do this now. Again, all in the name of progress - we should not be losing functionality as we move forward, we should be adding it.


The changes to the music app, while perhaps negligable to those who do not have extensive music collections, represents a giant leap backwards for those of us who do.


I use iTunes Match on my iPhone and have approx. 20,000 songs. That is a lot of scrolling if am browsing an artist's collection.


As much as I love the majority of changes in iOS 7, these navigation features in music are extremely important to me, and are an integral part of how I use my phone. It makes sense to me that Apple would listen to what their users say. I am surprised the deletion of these feautures made it through the QA that they no doubt subject new software releases to (particularly a release with the scope of iOS 7).

Sep 20, 2013 10:55 AM in response to zornie

It's not just the browsing that has suffered. The Music app no longer respects album boundaries when you enter albums through the Artists view. That is, it treats everything under a given Artist as a single implicit playlist, and my heart really sank when I played my first song and saw something like "1 of 388" for a 5 track album. When the last song of an album is played, the first song of the next album begins. Shuffling shuffles every song by that Artist, and there is no way to shuffle just the songs on the album you're interested in. To get the Music app to treat albums properly as it used to do, you have to enter the album through the Albums view or Search. It's just terrible.

Sep 20, 2013 11:19 AM in response to PFox78

I was VERY frustrated with the new music app initally, when I discovered that I now have to scroll through an artist's entire song catalogue instead of selecting an album or single to view first. I still am. However, if you're searching a specific artist in the music search bar, the album list comes back. I still think that Apple never should have taken that away in the main artist view, but at least it's not completely gone, for those of us with a ton of music.

Sep 20, 2013 4:08 PM in response to PFox78

I agree PFox78. A very simple and intuitive way of browsing through one's library has been made complicated and unwieldy. Again, same issues of many albums by one artist and having to scroll through. Hopefully this will be fixed. It was the only way I really accessed music, things like cover flow being simply too large to be useful. (However artist 'cover' flow cold be interesting). Simple sort options and configurability would solve the issue.


Message was edited by: DelboyWilson

Sep 20, 2013 4:48 PM in response to DelboyWilson

Oh god...this app is awful now. It makes it unfunctional. I have Match and almost want a refund....maybe I do.


With a lot of music, the new Artist view is so difficult to scroll through. Thanks for the pictures....I don't care. They are tiny anyway.


And the album sorting within the Artist. ***???? This enrages me to no end.

Who the heck design this? Someone that obviously doesn't use the Music App. It's awful. Terrible. And Apple should be embarrassed that they release it.

Sep 20, 2013 8:01 PM in response to PFox78

I 100% agree with this post on the inconvenience of using the newly designed music app. I am upset, borderline furious at the new arrangement of the artist drop down list.


Why on earth did they think it was a good idea to input pictures when browsing for a song by artist, who cares? Like honestly.. I just want the song! The lack of alphabetization really bothers me as well.


I feel like the only plausible solution is to get rid of the album names completely.


Another solution is to make each album name for each artist the same as the artist name itself. Therefore, when you tap on artist, there will be one single album in alphabetical order

Sep 21, 2013 2:49 PM in response to PFox78

Just one more person agreeing.


The Music app (my main reason or using i-stuff) has been vandalised. I have 96 albums in my Dylan section, all carefully named to sort in the order I want ( by using 001, 002 etc at the start of names).


Alphabetical Sorting has been abandoned for useless chronological sorting ( a nonsense because of re-releases etc). Worse, I have to scroll for ages to find an album somewhere within the random ordering. Horrendous. Changes iTunes Match from brilliant to useless in one fell swoop.


Not to mention that I've only succeeded in downloading one song in three days.


Presumably the server issues will improve but the crap app will remain. How incredibly careless of Apple. How condescending and rude. A major change in functionality and usability without warning. (I would never have downloaded ios7). Amazon Cloud Player is starting to look good to me.

Sep 21, 2013 4:55 PM in response to Jimscriv

Thanks all for sharing in my frustration... I knew I wouldn't be the only one. Hopefully others write here too. I kindly request that you all provide feedback directly to Apple via Apple Care. As the senior technician told me, the more people complain about something, the more the engineers take it seriously.


Just be kind and descriptive as to what your issues are.


I have to say, though, that every time I go to my music, I wish I could have iOS6.1 back — even if the new iOS7 is more modern and snappier. For me, my Apple devices mean music, and having lost this functionality is like a punch to the gut after having spent so much time and effort organizing everything properly for years and now it's completely ignored.

iOS 7 Music App sorting issues

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