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Apple posts Apple Music walkthrough videos as first free trials expire

apple-music

One of the biggest complaints from users of Apple’s new streaming music service is that the user interface is often confusing and hard to navigate. The radio service, promoted as a standout feature of Apple Music, hardly gets front billing in the app, and non-techy users are often perplexed about where Apple Music and the radio service start and their own music collection ends. And what user inputs effect personalization in the app and where? To help answer some of these questions, Apple today published a series of Apple Music guided tours to help walk users through using the service.

Included in the tour videos are walkthroughs of several Apple Music features including playlists and radio, and the various sections within the app like “My Music” where purchased tracks are stored, and “Connect”, artist managed pages where fans can connect directly with musicians and view exclusive content.

Apple published the videos today just as the first of its initial 3 month trials for Apple Music are set to expire on September 30. (Related: Ben’s Apple Music Diary: Decision time – is it worth the money?)

Head below for the videos:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd3UNpAAY5Y]

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iIEONl4czo]

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmgwT8uS9yQ]

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMCTRJhchoI]

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJhMgChyO6M]

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8ia9JX7EcQ]

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrVZ5UsNNbo]

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Comments

  1. joelwrose (@joelwrose) - 8 years ago

    Now if they would just do something about it skipping songs and hanging. I was loving it until about a month ago (especially with using Siri on the Apple watch to control it). Now its a gamble if I can get through a single song uninterrupted. May just stick with Spotify for now. I’m wondering if its a server load issue. My wife and I both have the same issue.

    • nelson1112233 - 8 years ago

      If you have Google dns Set up, it might be your problem!

  2. David Marques - 8 years ago

    That’s the thing – you shouldn’t even need guidance videos for a music app. Smart UI designers introduce the functionality whilst keeping the interface as simple and beautiful as it was in Music pre-iOS 5. Man, I miss that clean, beautiful interface with the huge album art front and center! As a vinyl record lover, what I hate the most is how they’ve shrunken down album covers to a thumbnail on the iPad since Apple Music came along. What a waste! Such a huge, beautiful display and I can’t see record covers as they are meant to be seen! It’s tiny, ugly and surrounded by color-matching translucent crap all around… :(

    • nelson1112233 - 8 years ago

      I just scrolled to the comments to see this response.

      Not disappointed.

  3. Tim Butler - 8 years ago

    Is it just me or is some of this already outdate? Using a 6s Plus with iOS 9.0.1 I don’t get the option to reject an recommended playlist as shown at 1:20 in the “For You” video.

  4. zBrain (@joeregular) - 8 years ago

    they should’ve made these videos public, a few days after launch…

    • incredibilistic - 8 years ago

      True but they were still refining it. The three-dot menus were pretty bad but since iOS 9 they’re much better.

      You could blame Apple for it not looking this good when it was first released but them’s the brakes. There’s a lot of Apple Music hate on the web but I’m in the “I love it” camp and have every intention of sticking around despite the issues I’ve had with it.

      I think I just have more realistic expectations and there are times when even the best companies with seemingly flawless track records will stumble. That’s no reason to dub Apple Music a complete failure because it isn’t. It’s far better and more feature rich than any of the competition. It’s kinda like the Apple Watch: it has a bigger feature set and ecosystem than Android Wear but because it offers too much it’s getting slammed for being too difficult. Apple Music is facing the same fate but I think they’ll pull through.

      Siri integration is pretty snazzy and I can only imagine what’ll happen when the new Apple TV launches and you can speak albums and playlists through the Siri remote.

  5. Joe Cranford - 8 years ago

    Too late. I cancelled my free trial and not paying in. The experience killed it for me. What I liked was asking Siri to play a song — very cool. What I hated was (1) The bubble UI for indicating preferences: Why not just let me TELL YOU what I like instead of this useless guessing game? It was a major fail. (2) Likewise, not being able to scan my library to determine my tastes, what I listened to most, rated high, etc. to make suggestions from that. How do you miss that, Apple? Ever hear of “iTunes Genius”? (3) It was more difficult to find my music, playlists, artists, etc. than before. The UI is hard to read (bright red on white?) and poorly organized. I never even thought to try Radio because it wasn’t apparent. Maybe make that a separate app to get attention.

    (Note: I only used this on my iPhone, not my iMac or iPad.)

    All this has done is piqued my interest in competing apps. I finally decided to try Spotify and WOW – much easier to use. Imperfect, yes, but a superior UX than Apple Music. I also tried Pandora earlier this year and it has done a decent job of introducing me to some great music that’s part of my library now. iTunes Radio never quite cut it, and in Apple Music that experience seemed lost.

    Why Apple felt that had to be gimmicky instead of just plain easy is beyond me.

    • spiralynth - 8 years ago

      Apple Music is so dense and so robust it’s difficult to make its navigation “just plain easy”. I’ve been doing on-demand streaming for 5+ years (since the early days of Rhapsody, Grooveshark, Mog, etc.) and all of those services combined don’t offer the breadth and depth of what Apple Music does. It’s a very complex offering.

      The ui and layout Apple chose is not necessarily my favorite, but I can appreciate the challenges they faced, and still do. Apple could have gone the easy route and offered something simple like Spotify (yes, Spotify’s offering is extremely “simple” in comparison, and thus can afford an equally simple layout), but I respect that they chose to go above and beyond.

      Having said that, many elements of the interface and functions on iOS need improvement. Some of the design choices are just downright hideous (the white dialog boxes) and some basic functions are shockingly missing (like “Go to Album” or “Go to Artist” buttons from any song). The iTunes offering of Apple Music is far better designed, imo, but as 99% percent of my music listening is done on iDevices or Sonos vs. a computer, that’s of little use to me.

      I’ve long ago canceled my Spotify account, transferred all of my playlists and songs, and don’t see myself going back at any point. I trust Apple enough to believe that it will iron out these issues.

      • incredibilistic - 8 years ago

        I’m with you!! The ship jumpers are all too proud of themselves going to an inferior service — namely Spotify — but I suppose somebody has to keep that ship afloat. I’m all in with Apple Music.

        I think the UI is amazing and, among a number of things, I prefer the ever-changing color of the app as each album, playlist and song fills the screen. This as opposed to the black hole darkness and neon green UI of Spotify. I’d rather go back to Rdio. The UI makes awful use of white space but at least it wasn’t a single, dark, drab color. Tidal’s no different as it’s basically the bastard child of Spotify.

    • You just saved me from writing a ton, thank you. Apple Music is complete garbage. I started a Spotify trial at the same time too, and I have never looked back. Spotify nailed it, Apple Music reminds me of the days of building your own PC. I don’t have time for that. Music should be fun and effortless, not a chore. Apple Music caused Spotify to gain a customer they never would have. Me.

  6. Anyone know what the headphone in the photos for this article are?

  7. leifashley - 8 years ago

    For You and Radio is more or less, garbage. Occasionally I’ll want to discover some new stuff on For You, but … I can’t believe the Radio guy sold Apple on this manual curation.

    What if I’m tired, upbeat, or whatever.. For You is useless for that. Radio is a mess too. The old Apple Radio was actually better.

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.