“Apple’s brand new streaming music service is a lot like the first iPod,” Joanna Stern writes for The Wall Street Journal. “But it still stands to change how the world listens to music.”
“See, with a small software update, Apple is putting on-demand streaming of 30 million songs on most iPhones, iPads, Macs and iTunes-equipped Windows PCs—completely free for three months,” Stern writes. “Here’s how Apple Music isn’t at all like that first iPod: It is so jam packed with features, it lacks polish and simplicity. But its ability to know what I want to listen to next is so darn good, we may all be willing to live with the shortcomings.”
“Think of Apple Music’s interface as a game of Memory,” Stern writes. “The iPhone and iPad app, organized into five tabs, is so crammed with items, lists and menus that it’s hard to find things initially, harder still to remember where they are later. Seriously, it’s like Russian nesting dolls: menus within menus within menus!”
“The real decision doesn’t come now, but in three months,” Stern writes. “And that may be all the time Apple needs.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple Music is, right now, a hot mess. But, we’re already in love with it, warts and all.
Much UI work to be done – get crackin’, Apple!
We asked this in a previous post, in case you missed it, but have an answer:
You’d think it’d be apparent that if you choose to make a “New Station from Artist” (or from Song) that you’d be able to find the station or at least be pointed to it somehow. That’s the way iTunes Radio worked, but it’s not so with Apple Music Radio on the Mac, at least, that we can see.
Why is this so confusing! It seems like a really simple thing. So, where’s the station we just made?! We’d expect to be able find it somewhere (preferably prominently) under the “Radio” tab, plus synced and automatically available on all our Macs and iOS devices, of course. You know, for later use. But, no dice.
We’re off the RTFM, but we feel like we shouldn’t have to do that just to find a station we just made, if Apple had done their job properly.
UPDATE 9:51pm EDT: We still haven’t found an answer, but after poking around, it seems that if we make a new station in iTunes 12.2, the only way we’ve found to “Save” it for future use is to share it with ourselves via email, Messages, etc. That’s pretty suboptimal. If we’re wrong about this, please advise in comments below.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
The interface is a hot mess. Steve always pressed simplicity, and I feel that’s slipped a bit with the Apple watch, iTunes and Apple Music. Hopefully, this is being addressed because the products are stellar.
Maybe I misunderstand your problem, but stations work fine for me. I just picked “New Station from Artist” while playing a song. That new station shows up under the Radio tab as a Recently Played station – right below the main Beats 1 banner. And it instantly shows up in the same place on my iPhone as well. Easy.
We must have had something weird going on. Signing out of iTunes, restarting the Mac, and signing back into iTunes has cleared up the issue. Stations are now showing up as expected. Joy!
Just like Windows! Yay!
Yeah! Macs are supposed to be perfect and NEVER need to be rebooted.
Snow Leopard actually came pretty close to living up to that ideal. Relative to the stability of Mac software 5 years ago, it’s been a river of shit out of Apple ever since.
When you are interested in just shipping instead of actually making things work Apple Music is the result.
Apple Music should have been a separate App, instead they had to integrate it into the music player and screw up everything for everyone. Streaming Music is something that no one has cracked, Apple Music is no different. Apple should have used a little bit of common sense and realized that not everyone want to listen to streaming music. Most people have their own music and will continue listening to them. I don’t know why I would want to listen to the song on apple music when I already have the song with me. I have created playlists of my own and I am happy about it. Now with Apple music being integrated to the Music player everything gets messy for everyone.
Common sense is not common and Apple certainly doesn’t seem to have any of late.
Nishanth, you don’t speak for everything or everyone. Apple Music did not screw up everything for everyone, as you said. It’s something new, with new buttons, old buttons in new locations, new options, new terminology, on and on. Just like when you get a new car, a new TV, or a new toaster oven, you have to spend some time with it to learn how it works and make using it more enjoyable. Is Music’s layout perfect to me in every way? No. But nothing is going to be universally perfect to everyone. For now I have faith that they’ll tweak it with updates over time to address the most widespread critiques. Until then, I think it’s a very excellent start, especially with it’s integration with Siri.
I think so many people enjoy the sound of their own whining that whining is their go-to response to everything. Enough, please. Thus ends my whining about whiners. 😊
I was one of those who thought I would never “rent” music. Now I think different.
Any song/album + music I would never have known + radio stations + sense of being connected with the rest of the world + ability to add to my music + playlists + ability to actually buy music = BLISS
Oh forgot to mention…….
No ads + three months free + only $2.50 per person per month.
Everything is good. I love the interface UI.
People are making this shit up. Either that or some kind of misunderstanding is going on……such as the one with MDN. Now that they understand it, it is apparently “joyfull”.
People are not making up their dissatisfaction with the interface. Get over yourself.
I like it so far. Don’t know if I will pay $10/mo for it. But the music sounds great and the built playlists really good.
The new music app is a mess. Functions hidden behind burger menus and … links which seem to have no real logic behind them at all.
My biggest complaint:
Want to shuffle all the songs you have for an artist? Before, one would pull up the artist, then touch “Shuffle”. Now, one can do that only for individual albums. To shuffle the entire artist, one has to press the ellipses (…) button at the top, go to Play Next, then turn on shuffle manually.
Oh, and they got rid of the letters along the right side, so scrolling to an artist is basically useless unless one has very little music on one’s phone. Searching is the only way.
Wrong. They did not get rid of the letters along the right side. The letters appear as soon as you start scrolling down, which means you never even tried that.
Try before you whine.
Thanks! I did try, I just simply didn’t scroll. I put my finger on the right side, hoping the letters would appear. I even moved it up and down a bit (but not far enough). When they didn’t appear, I immediately went to the search, because I had no desire to scroll through to find the artist I wanted. Again, thanks!
My other complaint still stands.
Your other complaint does seem to be valid. Still learning all the tricks myself. It’s a whole new ballgame, but I like the game! 😀
Am I missing something or does it no longer show you that you’re on track x of y within a playlist?
I noticed that as well. Also annoying, especially on a playlist. If it is still there, I haven’t found a way to show it.
I also find the album art background a bit strong, some just don’t look very good, but they’re also a bit disorientating because the app looks different every time.
The best option seems to be to click the List icon, which will show Up Next. From there, you can see how many songs are left.
Gee, can’t find the menus you speak of
I tried to order food and some hot links would be good
Why did you put your menu UNDER the iTunes, of course the burger juices would obscure the functions
Watch UI and Apple Music UI are definitely not excellent.
Apple had a good run in software design but now they are simply average at best. It’s clear some key people are no longer there.
Yes they are.
This articulate post eloquently demonstrates the mental superiority of Samscum owners. /s
Dr Dre’s Pharmacy is sublime, I can’t get enough of it, the guy (and his studio possie) are in-sync. I’m fucking pissed that “offensive” words are deleted, it kills the rhythm, the tempo and the fidelity.
I hope that they eventually shuffle the program times around, so that us peeps on the other side of the world’s time zones get a chance to listen in at a sensible time … like at 9pm not 3am.
Apple Music; definitely has UI issues, software bugs and programming timing plights – Global radio broadcasting, can not appease only one subset, it must cater for the true GLOBAL audience, we are either all in this adventure together or not. Programs will need to rotate to make it equitable.
I venture that Apple are working overcome these issues, as they, in the traditional Apple way – iterate, enhance and improve the service, they will take their time though, casting firm foundations for Music’s long and harmonious future.
Artist Station is easy, choose a song from any of the tabs, click on the mini-player triple dot icon way over on the right hand side, choose Start Station, done. When you go to Radio it will be the first Station you see under “Recently Played”. And if you tap those words it will take you, on any device, to all the Stations you’ve created and in chronological order.
iTunes is a huge mess.
Trouble came when it added the purchasing of movies and music. At the time it made sense to combine it all there. As it was the hub for all media. However, as time past, this mess grew. I buy my Mac apps in another app called there App Store… one would have thought Apple would have consolidated all apps – be it iPad, iPhone or iMac apps in one place — seemingly obvious the App store. But no. Personally the simplification could look like this. The App Store for all Apps. The Media Store for renting movies, buy movies and music. Logical move. Just as Apple killed iChat into two programs… I believe Apple should really do more than a UI change to iTunes… it really needs to break it up.
Smaller Apps to do specific things makes sense on updating on where to go and how to use it. Shhhhhh but that is just my opinion.
Does Apple Music have music that no one else has?
Are the differentiated titles worth the rice of admission?
Music is music
Definitely worth the rice.
I still use slacker radio i pay 3.99 a month no commercials and the stations they have that i use music is a good choice. I did have to change the christian rock station as they had stuff in there that was not at all rock but otherwise its good.
I played with apple music for a day. 1. can’t stream over cellular even though i have tons of data. 2. the apple music is lacking in how it picks music and makes me think its computer programmed