“Apple Inc. is planning sweeping changes to its year-old music streaming service after the first iteration of the product was met with tepid reviews and several executives brought in to revive the company’s music strategy departed,” Alex Webb, Lucas Shaw, and Adam Satariano report for Bloomberg. “”
“Apple is altering the user interface of Apple Music to make it more intuitive to use, according to people familiar with the product who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public,” Webb, Shaw, and Satariano report. “Apple also plans to better integrate its streaming and download businesses and expand its online radio service, the people said. The reboot is expected to be unveiled at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June.”
“It acquired Beats Music two years ago in part to rethink its approach to the music business by blending its technological expertise with the entertainment industry experience of Beats executives such as Jimmy Iovine,” Webb, Shaw, and Satariano report. “But the combination hasn’t yet fulfilled its potential. The deal sparked a rare culture clash within Apple that led to the departure of several key managers and, most important, created a product that many critics say doesn’t meet Apple’s own lofty standards. Apple is still struggling to integrate its employees and unite the streaming and downloading businesses into a cohesive music strategy, said the people.”
“Following the Beats acquisition in 2014, Apple scrapped the international rollout of iTunes Radio just a few hours before an event where it would have been announced. Employees who had been working on the project for more than a year were told it would be rolled into a new streaming service based on Beats,” Webb, Shaw, and Satariano report. “But once Apple Music was released last June, the response was mixed. Reviewers praised the depth of the music catalog, but criticized its confusing interface.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Here’s hoping the revamp delivers intuitiveness that Apple Music currently lacks and is sorely needed. We use it every day, but it’s a freaking mess; Microsoftian crap-by-committee, to be blunt.
Some of our previous commentary regarding Apple Music and iTunes:
Apple Music is a service for music lovers, not music dabblers. Music lovers will find Apple Music to be invaluable.
That said, Apple Music certainly has issues.
One thing, among many, that Apple needs to fix in Apple Music:
In iTunes Store, you can easily see which songs are most popular on an album or for each artist. When you look at an album in Apple Music, there is no popularity rating. Apple needs to simply use the iTunes Store data in those views. Call it ‘iTunes Store Popularity.” It gives the listener cues as to where to start sampling a new album. Whatever the reasoning for not including that individual track popularity measure in Apple Music, if there is a reason and not just another oversight, it is wrong.Another thing Apple needs to fix in Apple Music:
If a user is an Apple Music member, there should obviously be NO 1:30 PER TRACK PREVIEW FOR APPLE MUSIC MEMBERS. Why force subscribers to switch over and hunt for the track in Apple Music so that they can play the whole song to which they are already entitled? You know they are subscribers, Apple. It’s extraordinarily stupid to limit subscribers in this way. It’s frustrating. It makes us not want to bother. It’s a wrongheaded impediment to music discovery. We’ve paid for the entire track to stream unlimited. Let us.There are countless other niggles that we have with Apple Music that, frankly, should not have been there in a properly-managed, properly-tested product at launch much less continue to exist today. — MacDailyNews, October 7, 2015
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We’re still amazed this thing came out of Apple and we’re hoping for a massive overhaul of the whole iTunes+Apple Music desktop mess ASAP. At least give us some consistency between how we deal with music on our Macs vs. on our iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. (Shouldn’t it be “how we enjoy music,” not “how we deal with music?” Unfortunately, with iTunes it too often feels like a chore.) — MacDailyNews, August 19, 2015
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As for iTunes:
Apple, especially under Steve Jobs, has shown a great and admirable willingness to cannibalize themselves. They obliterated their iPod business with the iPhone, for one example. But, when it comes to iTunes, they seem paralyzed by fear of change. Apple paralyzed by fear is not a pretty thing and it doesn’t yield pretty things. It yields hot messes like iTunes.
iTunes screams to be broken up into separate, streamlined apps. It’s been screaming that for years. But Apple seems to be scared silly to do so — perhaps 800+ million credit cards have something to do with it — so they’ve tinkered around the edges, making questionable tweaks here an there and bolting on even more bloat.
Grow a pair, Apple, and do what needs to be done already. — MacDailyNews Take, July 17, 2015
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If you have to ask yourself “Why is this so difficult? Am I an idiot?” then there is a User Interface problem, not a user problem. This is, after all, what we pay Apple for. Those type of questions are for Windows/Android sufferers, not Mac/iOS users.
Who’s responsible for iTunes’ unsettled, rather awful UI, a blind Microsoft reject or nobody at all? – MacDailyNews Take, July 10, 2015
SEE ALSO:
Spotify dims as Apple Music shines – April 27, 2016
Apple Music needs a web widget – March 8, 2016
Yet another example of how Apple Music is messed up – December 16, 2015
Apple admits it has ‘homework to do’ to improve Apple Music – September 3, 2015
Apple Music, both on iOS and OS X, is an embarrassing and confusing mess – July 10, 2015