iOS 8.4 Apple Music fails my first test: Just play something!

[CZroe]

First test: Play something random and shuffle through the rest of my entire library.

With the Music app in iOS 8.3 all I had to do is pull down to see "Shuffle" from the "Songs" view. As I recall, Apple Music in iOS 8.4 defaulted to artist view (could have been Album view), which is fine, but there is no option to play a random track from your entire library even after switching views. I have to either pick something at random MYSELF (hard to do with my huge library, which means I will always be choosing the same songs from the top of the list) or cheat by using voice control/Siri (external UI). In the past Siri seemed to be programmed to deliberately misinterpret my request and sometimes start "something random" in iTunes Radio when I instructed it to "play something random."

If I am simply missing the option, please enlighten me. If Apple is so good at user interfaces, how am I missing it? It's pretty stupid that I can pick an album and then shuffle the songs in it but I can't go to my entire library and do the same.

 

[CZroe]

Fail number two:
The reason to shuffle through your entire library like that is often to find something to listen to. When you do find something to listen to, you might be inspired to listen to more/something else from that artist, album, etc. For example, if shuffle brought up a track from the middle of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds musical, I might start the whole musical or I might go listen to my favorite part. Apple Music in iOS 8.4 seems to have no way to jump the the album that the current track is playing from. The Music app in iOS 8.3 certainly did.

Of course, I love having "Up Next," but that's two major steps backwards and I've only been using it for moments.

 

[Anubis]

no shuffle all?

total fail

 

[CZroe]

no shuffle all?

total fail

You can get it to shuffle all but only after making a manual selection. You're going to hear the beginning of a lot of tracks that start with "A" if you do this frequently.

Because I do most of my track switching with my Pebble I routinely start a random track and skip until I find something I want to listen to. Hopefully it will not reload or lose your progress as often as the old Music app so it won't be as annoying.

 

[CZroe]

Argh! I was really hoping that they started from the ground up as they claim to have done but it still has the same annoying problem the Music app has always had. I'm referring to the one where some tracks would not play and others would only play up to a point before they skip to the next track. If you try to play again without rebooting the phone it will skip at the exact same spot. Restarting the phone fixes it so it's some kind of caching problem, not a corrupted source. This might only be a problem for phones with TLC NAND, like my 6 Plus 128GB. All I know is that it also does it on my brother's 128GB TLC NAND iPhone 6 Plus.

That long-term everyday issue was the main reason I was excited for the revamped app. The song I was just listening to while writing this post is a random selection that happens to be from a continuous play album (Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole) and now I have to wonder if the abrupt ending was because of this glitch or because of the CP transition to a different track.

 

[CZroe]

Not sure yet if this was an Apple Music problem or not but I couldn't control volume with my Pebble until I stopped Apple Music. I had also launched the Pebble app before finding that it suddenly worked so I'm not sure which action fixed it.

I could long-press the center (Play/Pause) button all I wanted but the Up and Down buttons (Previous/Next) would not change to their alternate function (VolUp/VolDown).

I never encountered this with 8.3 and earlier.

The usefulness of "Up Next" is limited because you can't remove things you already know you want to skip. If you just keep moving them down then you are soon going to have a bunch of crap you want to skip through which you could've done in the first place instead of arranging things. It's like they thought you only want to add things instead of preemptive let skip selections in shuffle playback.

Edit: I realized that you can remove tracks from UpNext by swiping left but you can't swipe left by grabbing the grabber handle! For some reason the handle only lets you move it up and down even though it is used for sliding in sidebars in so many other interfaces.

 

[gevorg]

No landscape mode in Music?

 

[CZroe]

No landscape mode in Music?

Nope, but landscape mode only triggered a useless album art view in the old app. That's another annoyance I was hoping they'd fix.

Oh, and I figured out how to remove tracks from Up Next: swipe left but avoid the grabber handle.

 

[weevilone]

Argh! I was really hoping that they started from the ground up as they claim to have done but it still has the same annoying problem the Music app has always had. I'm referring to the one where some tracks would not play and others would only play up to a point before they skip to the next track. If you try to play again without rebooting the phone it will skip at the exact same spot. Restarting the phone fixes it so it's some kind of caching problem, not a corrupted source. This might only be a problem for phones with TLC NAND, like my 6 Plus 128GB. All I know is that it also does it on my brother's 128GB TLC NAND iPhone 6 Plus.

That sounds like a reason to have Apple check out the hardware device.

 

[CZroe]

That sounds like a reason to have Apple check out the hardware device.

I've already had to exchange it for other reasons twice and my brother has the exact same phone, so I've already seen it across four devices. They will not acknowledge that having TLC NAND alone is grounds for an exchange so I have to have a related problem that can't be cleared up with a restore operation or reboot. My first warranty exchange was due to being suddenly unable to boot or restore (likely a TLC NAND problem). The second was due to the OIS camera going nuts and vibrating out of control (makes "swimming" video). Third is my current phone. Fourth is my brother's phone. I can't count the fifth one we sold at launch since we never used it.

 

[RampantAndroid]

HORIZONTAL MODE IS GONE! YES YES YES YES!

I *(%&ing HATED that horizontal mode.

For shuffling all songs, all I've never known how to do is go to all songs, scroll randomly, tap song, turn on shuffle. It's worked fine for me.

I had the SAME problem going to the album currently playing. It's kinda hidden (but still there.) When the current song is in full screen mode (meaning you see the album cover over half of the screen, the lower part of the screen has the familiar title, artist, progress bar and such, click the "..." in the lower right of the screen. Now you see at the top the song, artist and album, and under it you see "start station", "Show in iTunes store" and such. Tap the VERY top item which lists the song title and such.

If that makes no sense, I can make a video really fast if you like.

 

[CZroe]

HORIZONTAL MODE IS GONE! YES YES YES YES!

I *(%&ing HATED that horizontal mode.

For shuffling all songs, all I've never known how to do is go to all songs, scroll randomly, tap song, turn on shuffle. It's worked fine for me.

I had the SAME problem going to the album currently playing. It's kinda hidden (but still there.) When the current song is in full screen mode (meaning you see the album cover over half of the screen, the lower part of the screen has the familiar title, artist, progress bar and such, click the "..." in the lower right of the screen. Now you see at the top the song, artist and album, and under it you see "start station", "Show in iTunes store" and such. Tap the VERY top item which lists the song title and such.

If that makes no sense, I can make a video really fast if you like.

THANK YOU!

Jesus, that's unintuitive. It looks just like the "Now Playing" bar that takes you to the screen you were just on with no indication that it's going to do anything different.

As for shuffling without selecting a song first: the option was scrolled off the top by default on prior versions so you had to pull down to see it. Even if you were doing it that way it takes an extra step now because it doesn't automatically advance to the Now Playing screen.

 

[CZroe]

OK, now that I can jump to the full album when a song comes up on shuffle, I'm disappointed to see that it doesn't dump it into the Up Next playlist when you make a selection (would solve the old problem of getting stuck in an album without whipping your phone back out). Selecting a track doesn't take you back to Now Playing anymore. Going back manually, you'll see that it also didn't turn off shuffle like it would have in earlier versions. Bummer, because going back to play the whole album usually happens when I want to listen to it properly. Furthermore, it starts the currently-playing track over when you disable shuffle! What's up with that?!

 

[RampantAndroid]

It never disabled shuffle for me before? I mean, I accidentally shuffled things before...

 

[RampantAndroid]

THANK YOU!

Jesus, that's unintuitive. It looks just like the "Now Playing" bar that takes you to the screen you were just on with no indication that it's going to do anything different.

As for shuffling without selecting a song first: the option was scrolled off the top by default on prior versions so you had to pull down to see it. Even if you were doing it that way it takes an extra step now because it doesn't automatically advance to the Now Playing screen.

YW

And yeah, it's pretty unintuitive. This update leaves *A LOT* to be desired. It's worse in iTunes - there is no way when looking at an artist in my library (say Led Zeppelin) to right click them and go to their Apple Music page...and searching is limited depending on where you are. The iTunes Store is still separate (it doesn't serve up full songs for me, it serves up the samples) and searching for an artist in my music brings up my music only. I have to go into "for you" to search Apple Music. And finding all songs you have downloaded/added to your library (which I like. I like having more or less the Zune pass on my iPhone) is hard. You have to go to All Songs and enable the "iCloud Status" column, where it'll expose if it's "Apple Music", "Matched", "Uploaded", "Duplicate" or "Ineligible" - that took a little bit to find.

I've got to admit, it feels like I'm a beta tester. Not that have a separate app for Spotify is better...but this isn't what I expected. Apple fails at making things easy to find. I feel like a kid punching buttons to see what they do, but afraid to see which one makes my phone catch fire.

 

[CZroe]

It never disabled shuffle for me before? I mean, I accidentally shuffled things before...

In prior versions, when you shuffled all songs then pulled up an album from the currently playing track and selected a track from that album, it would stop shuffling all songs and start playing the album in order from the track you selected. When finished it would not return to the rest of your shuffled library without starting over. When you are controlling with AVRCP or a Pebble or something then you are "stuck" in that album. You can toggle shuffle for tracks in an album too so you probably have that toggled on in addition to shuffle for all individual songs. I don't see the point of using shuffle for tracks within an album though, so I don't use it.

 

[CZroe]

This is just inexcusable. I'm listening to my library on shuffle when a song I like comes up. I like a couple other songs from that album which I'd like to listen to next. Perfect scenario for using the Up Next feature:

So far, so good, right? Let's skip forward a couple times and then go back:

Huh? Skipping back from "Peaches" should have taken me to "Lump," not "Kick Out the Jams." Let's go forward:

WTF?! "Up Next" also shows "History" when you scroll up, so why isn't it going back and forward through that? How does this make any sense?!

This example uses individual songs but you are far more likely to encounter the problem when you add a whole album that you are more likely to skip through than songs you deliberately added.

This has already happened a few times:
"No wait. I think the one I'm looking for from this album was that track I just skipped and I just didn't wait long enough. I'll go back and scrub through to see." "Huh? What happened to it?!" It's even more likely to happen when you are using skip controls on a device that doesn't show the track name (Bluetooth) and you don't instantly recognize the beginning.

 

[Sixguns]

Didnt the music app take you back to your last played song even after closing the music app? Cant seem to figure out what happened and why it doesnt do that anymore. I have a habit of closing apps out all the time and now I lose my place in the album I was listening too. Any help with this.

 

[CZroe]

Didnt the music app take you back to your last played song even after closing the music app? Cant seem to figure out what happened and why it doesnt do that anymore. I have a habit of closing apps out all the time and now I lose my place in the album I was listening too. Any help with this.

I don't think it would as I routinely used the swipe down and shuffle all option. The old Music app would routinely glitch and resume the last song I played from the beginning. With my short commutes it sometimes means I would get stuck on the same song for days. When memory management unloads it from memory it is supposed to recall your position but it doesn't. Might be another TLC NAND caching error because it does it on my brother's TLC NAND phone too.

 

[Sixguns]

And now its will back out and stop music at random.

 

[Ma_Deuce]

Just updated last night and now I need to find a replacement. The music app has slowly evolved from a way to easily listen to my music into a way to more easily purchase songs from apple or share my tastes to coerce friends into purchasing. Unfortunately for me, I enjoy listening to music more than spending my $$$.

 

[Rakehellion]

Do NOT turn on iCloud Music Library! It's made duplicates of my songs and attributed them to the wrong artists. Turning it off doesn't delete the duplicates. I tried to play a Prince song and got Tool instead. :\ Also for some reason it matched some of my songs to White Zombie. I don't even have anything by White Zombie.

A good prank to play on mom, not so good for me.

 

[gevorg]

http://ioshacker.com/cydia/musicmod-tweak-declutters-ios-8-4s-music-app

 

[Ns1]

I must be the only one with zero issues in the new app.

 

[Oyeve]

Do NOT turn on iCloud Music Library! It's made duplicates of my songs and attributed them to the wrong artists. Turning it off doesn't delete the duplicates. I tried to play a Prince song and got Tool instead. :\ Also for some reason it matched some of my songs to White Zombie. I don't even have anything by White Zombie.

A good prank to play on mom, not so good for me.

Wow. I remember itunes 7 (years and years ago) did the same thing when I connected my ipod to my comp!