{"id":14363,"date":"2016-05-05T11:17:53","date_gmt":"2016-05-05T15:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=14363"},"modified":"2016-05-06T10:32:46","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T14:32:46","slug":"improving-apple-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/05\/improving-apple-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving Apple Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Gurman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The new version of Apple Music, which Apple recently announced has 13 million users so far, focuses on a redesigned user-interface, a few new functions, and reorganization as well as simplification of existing features. The new user-interface ditches the current colorful and translucent look in favor of a simpler design that emphasizes black and white backgrounds and text. For instance, the user interface in the albums view will no longer change in appearance based on the color of a particular album’s art. While the new interface will eschew color in the user-interface, album artwork will become “huge” and a larger part of the interface in order to avoid a dull black and white look, according to people who have seen the updated Apple Music service.<\/p>\n

The new interface will also make use of additional 3D Touch shortcut previews and better promote the ability to share songs. However, the social Connect feature will remain mostly unchanged in this year’s revamp.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I still think<\/a> the most obvious solution is to make Apple Music its own standalone app. “All your music in one app” sounds like a great idea in theory, but in practice, I believe that is what has led to the confusing UI. It’s yet another major feature added to iTunes on Mac and Windows — an app that everyone<\/em> seems to agree already has too many features and responsibilities. What do you see when you open the Spotify or Pandora apps? Just the streaming music you have access to. That makes them less complicated, by definition. “Everything you see is in the cloud, and you have access to it because you are a subscriber<\/em>” is easy to understand. “Some of this is in the cloud, some of this you own<\/em>” is more complicated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Kirk McElhearn<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The promise of Apple Music and iCloud Music Library was this ability to merge your own iTunes library with music from Apple Music; unfortunately, when Apple Music and iCloud Music Library were launched, it was a disaster, causing no end of problems to people (like me) with large, carefully curated music libraries.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

What is confusing is all the buttons and options, and the poorly designed For You section, which offers useless recommendations that you simply cannot get rid of. If I see a playlist I don’t want to know about in Apple Music, and choose I Don’t Like This, it should disappear, not stay there. It shouldn’t be just about tweaking my personal algorithm, it should instantly go away.<\/p>\n

And the other problem – on the desktop at least – is the fact that you can go from Apple Music to the iTunes Store, but not from the iTunes Store to Apple Music. It’s understandable; Apple doesn’t want to give away what it might be able to sell, but it’s crippling Apple Music by not allowing people who get to the iTunes Store via links and making them manually search for an item in Apple Music if they want to stream it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2016-05-05): Jim Dalrymple<\/a> (tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n

I think we can be honest and admit you released Apple Music when it wasn’t ready. There were just too many bugs for it to be any other way, but you did it regardless.<\/p>\n

Developers and consumers want to know you heard us—that you took our criticisms to heart and you fixed the problems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2016-05-06): Tony L<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Regarding Apple Music. AM has 13 million paying users. Pandora has 80 million active users but only 4 million paying users.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

At its core, as a pure “queue up a song I don’t own” streaming service, I have found Apple Music totally competent. However, there are lots of ways in which the service is failing to live up to the promises of last year’s introductory keynote.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

After reading this series of somewhat disjointed thoughts, you might reasonably conclude that Apple Music is a failed product. I do not believe this is the case. But I do think that it is unfinished, it was rushed, and it does not behave in the real world as Apple imagined it might.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Gurman: The new version of Apple Music, which Apple recently announced has 13 million users so far, focuses on a redesigned user-interface, a few new functions, and reorganization as well as simplification of existing features. The new user-interface ditches the current colorful and translucent look in favor of a simpler design that emphasizes black […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1272,1230,31,1380,1137,189,30,1199,1381,158],"class_list":["post-14363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-3d-touch","tag-apple-music","tag-ios","tag-ios-10","tag-ios-9","tag-itunesstore","tag-mac","tag-mac-os-x-10-11","tag-macos-10-12","tag-strategytax"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14363"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14383,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14363\/revisions\/14383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}