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How to Get Rid of Recently Added Album Art on Itunes

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Apple tree Music is in Crude Shape. Hither'south How to Fix It.

Apple Music for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS are in rough shape.

In the half dozen+ years since Apple Music was released in June of 2015, it has been a controversial app, to put it mildly. In those 6 years, I've written extensively on Apple Music's flaws — both big and pocket-sized. Some of these flaws have been resolved, many haven't, and some new ones have been introduced. It's been a while since my 2017 list of Apple Music'due south shortcomings, so it'south time for a 2021 update.

Equally a music lover, longtime Apple fan, and pattern enthusiast, I really want to similar this app, simply it has then many issues, of both a design nature and a technical nature. There are as well many missing features. For a visitor with and so many fantastic products and such loftier standards, the Apple Music app is a rare misstep.

Here's why the app is so controversial, has so many shortcomings, and what Apple tin can practise to improve it.

If I could provide a xxx,000 foot summary of what I see equally the major trouble inherent to Apple Music's design, information technology's that it doesn't quite know what it wants to exist.

There are two principal types of music listeners — those who maintain libraries and those who don't. Some people like to collect hundreds, if non thousands of albums, organize them, maintain them, and play back the specific music they want to hear at that specific moment. Others prefer the streaming method, where they might have sure genres, styles of music, and even artists they enjoy, merely they're happy letting a curator (human or algorithmic) send them an endless stream of songs roughly based on their tastes.

Group A are the people who nerveless vinyl records/cassettes/CDs/iTunes libraries throughout their lives. The physical media are mostly gone, only the want to collect and organize is non. They know exactly what they like, and while they savor suggestions and curation and recommendations to add to their library, they tend to listen to specific artists, specific albums, and specific songs, not simply music within a general mode or overall genre.

Grouping B are those who are more than oriented around radio stations, mix tapes, Summit 40 hits, and of class, Spotify streams. Some would call them more coincidental listeners. That's not at all a denigrating term, rather, information technology simply points to the key divergence in how they consume music compared to Group A.

Apple Music is trying to appeal to both crowds and in my stance, information technology doesn't get either 1 right. It's stuck in the middle, doing a sort of half-hearted job at both. The result is that information technology provides a mediocre product to both Group A and Group B.

Almost Group B people volition tell yous that Apple Music's recommendations are simply not as skillful every bit Spotify'southward. Whatever suggestion algorithms Apple uses just aren't nearly as authentic as they ought to exist. They've improved over fourth dimension, only they all the same take a long way to become. And information technology's worth noting that tapping the 'Beloved' hearts or the 'Propose Less Like This' button is supposed to improve the proposition algorithms, but it doesn't seem to piece of work very well in practice. The curation ofttimes feels more like advertising, where the characteristic is less catered around what the end user wants, and more around what the content providers (i.e. Apple and/or the tape labels) wish to foist upon them. That's a problem, as it makes the app experience like a drove of billboards, rather than a user-focused experience.

And for Group A people (of which I am one), the tools to be able to organize, sort, sift through, maintain, and play dorsum a music library — are just sorely lacking and pb to a terrible experience.

There are pregnant shortcomings in terms of the technical operation, blueprint, and missing features that actually injure the experience for both groups.

That'due south the xxx,000 human foot summary of the problem. For a fiddling more detail and specificity on these problems, on what needs to be fixed and improved, and on why the Apple Music app doesn't meet the standards we normally expect from Apple, hither's a listing of some of these issues, broken out into the 3 master categories —Technicals, Design, and Missing Features:

Technicals

  1. Backend tech. The entire Apple tree Music backend needs dramatic improvement in terms of album organization, matching, and fifty-fifty genre listings. We're 6+ years into Apple Music and it'due south still a mess. For instance, albums still become broken up all the time (i.e. it will match one-half your anthology to one version on Apple's database and half to a remaster of the same anthology, pregnant it at present thinks yous take half of two albums). This even frequently occurs with individual songs, where Apple Music will take a song in your library, see that you similar it, and so suggest back to you an alternative version of that vocal, such as in the Apple 'Favorites Mix' playlist, which somehow has enough of songs you know and love from your Library, but that are listed as existence from the Apple Music database. This creates all sorts of problems with metadata, with system and analytics, and fifty-fifty with Siri requests.
  2. Matching. These higher up matching problems occur even with music I've downloaded right from Apple Music, where I'll download an album and then when I become back to information technology later on, it volition have been broken upward due to numerous matching errors. This results in so much library duplication and messiness, as the music you download from Apple Music is never on solid footing, and the interplay between what's part of your Library and what isn't — is a mess. Information technology also creates problems for when you lot may not have an internet connection.
  3. Terrible operation. The app is slow to load and it frequently refreshes, even on my iPhone 12. I don't know if this is some sort of memory limitation, but performance this atrocious on a main kickoff political party Apple tree app is a big problem. This needs to be improved dramatically.

Design

  1. 'Up Adjacent' is atrocious. The 'Up Next' song queuing organisation needs a rethink in terms of how 'Play Next' / 'Play Last' work. Functionally, the old 'Play Afterward' feature made more than sense than the current 'Play Last' feature that replaced it, but I'chiliad guessing it was inverse a few years ago because 'Afterwards' is an ambiguous term that was confusing to users regarding where exactly information technology would insert the music. Perchance a possible solution to this is to have some sort of visual aid, where you lot printing and hold an 'Upwardly Adjacent' button, a footling horizontal visual representation of the timeline pops up higher up your pollex, and you can slide your thumb over to the insertion point (ie. with markers at Next/Later/Last), you release your pollex, and the music you lot had selected gets inserted at that point in the timeline. I remember a simple graphical gesture system like that would be a lot better than having discrete 'Play Next' / 'Play Last' buttons, as we currently accept.
  2. The 'Now Playing' screen needs a redesign. Visually it's fine, but navigating feels like a job — everything from jumping in and out of Lyrics and 'Up Adjacent', to tapping a name and hitting 'Go To' — all feels cumbersome and unnatural, even later on years of apply. I'd like to see Apple tree Music adopt the 'pillbox' gesture organization from the iPhone 10 and now from Safari for iOS fifteen. Instead of tapping buttons randomly scattered on the Now Playing screen to enter into these various 'modes', you would swipe between tabs (i.e. the Lyrics/Now Playing/Up Next tabs), and then you'd swipe upward to go an overview that acts equally a sort of Control Middle with all the fundamental functionality you lot need for the Music app.
  3. Playlist management. Playlist management needs to exist improved, with amend folder functionality, more than views, and a better use of space. Even a five.iv" and half dozen.1" iPhone screen only displays 5 line items at a fourth dimension. Past comparison, my old 2.5" iPod Classic displayed nine line items. With only 5 lines, that means you have to scroll and so much to go anywhere. And you still tin't place Apple tree Music playlists in folders. It too seems odd to me that the "New Playlist…" function is a line item rather than a button.
  4. Use of space. In improver to the higher up points, the playlist tiles/icons on the left are likewise big and don't serve a purpose. All they practice is button the text over to the correct, which reduces the horizontal space, and thus creates too much vertical space for each line. You end up with a lot of white infinite. And then the Playlists screen lacks functionality and has a poor use of infinite. It'south even aesthetically ugly due to the visual imbalance of having those large tiles on the left tertiary of the screen.

The Playlists screen is awful. Between the needlessly large tiles that serve no purpose, the excessive white infinite, the very limited sorting options and lack of Views, the odd choice to make "New Playlist…" a line item rather than a button, the fact that Apple Music Playlists can't even exist placed in folders, and of course, the excessive scrolling due the fact that only 5 line items are visible at a fourth dimension even on a large 5.iv" or six.1" device, this unabridged screen is a usability nightmare. It's hard to believe something so bad was created past Apple, and it's even harder to believe information technology STILL hasn't been fixed after all these years.

Design (continued)

  1. Gestures. More gestures are needed, similar two-finger drag to select multiple items (just like in Mail & Reminders) and pinch-to-zoom to resize and change information density (like in Photos).
  2. Discographies. Artist discographies demand meliorate organization. Remasters/Deluxe versions should never be in the primary discography. The chief discog should be original releases organized past original release date. Everything else should exist in separate sections. Information technology'southward worth noting that Wikipedia handles album organization ameliorate than Apple Music does. This area has seen some notable improvement over the years (i.e. EPs and singles were rightfully given a separate section a few years ago), but it needs to improve further.
  3. Animations. Excessive animations when navigating. The purpose of the animations is to give the user a sense of placement in the app, but these animations don't accept that effect in practice. For example, using the aforementioned 'Go To' characteristic causes all sorts of panels to slide up and over, and information technology only makes the app experience unnecessarily tedious. The whole method of getting effectually the app feels much slower and more cumbersome than it should. I think a key trouble is that these animations 'take you' somewhere. For instance, the original Steve Jobs iPhone demo of tapping an album cover to flip information technology over and show the track list is a good blitheness because information technology retains your sense of placement in the UI. Merely with the current app, when you tap 'Go To Anthology', it uses animations to take y'all to a new 'place', which is disorienting, along with being dull.
  4. Aesthetics. Much of the app is too thin and apartment, similar information technology's still stuck in the iOS 7 design ethos, fifty-fifty though much of iOS has evolved a off-white bit since and then. For example, the minimized 'Now Playing' bar should be rounded and less thin, like the iOS 15 Safari URL bar.
  5. Search prioritization. Search and Siri should place priority on your music Library. If I take an creative person/album/song in my Library, then when I search for it (either via text or via Siri), Apple Music should not exist grabbing some culling file from their database. That results in then much duplication and messy metadata and analytics. This is actually a problem that too exists in several other apps, including Maps and Calendar, where your own relevant info like an address or contact is given less priority than some random POI or search event Apple institute in ane of its databases.
  6. Too much focus on curation. The entire app is far also heavily focused on curation. 4 of the five main tabs are about curated content — 'Mind Now', 'Browse', 'Radio', and now even the 'Search' tab are all about "Here's music we desire you to listen to". Simply the Library tab is about the user's ain preferences, and that tab has gotten very little attention from Apple over the years. Equally a issue, the whole app feels like it was built for content providers, not for end users. Information technology feels similar a collection of billboards advertizing content at you. Curation is good, but in the right place. Apple tree Music has non constitute the right balance. Curation should be a characteristic, not the entire footing of the app'south design.
  7. Permanency. To expound on point #2 in the 'Technicals' section before, the matching problems result in a constant feeling of your library being ephemeral and inconsistent. The streaming ecosystem feels like it exists in a quantum country, where things just appear and disappear out of existence. Albums get divide up. A song you downloaded from an anthology gets matched dorsum to a single or greatest hits anthology. The 'Prove Complete Album' feature often brings you lot to a compilation. Music you've downloaded gets greyed out and removed. And so on. Your library never feels like information technology'south on solid ground. Perhaps a solution to the matching bug would be to introduce a transmission component to the process, where the user tin can ostend/deny the correctness of a friction match and submit errors, similar to how the mistake-reporting organisation works in Apple Maps. The fact is that even though this is a streaming service we pay for monthly, music we download should take a feeling of permanency. Just because we're renting our stuff monthly doesn't mean we don't want to maintain collections of that rented stuff.

Filter systems for Maps, Fitness, and the Apple Store app. This type of functionality is very much needed in Apple tree Music to sort through your Library using music metadata. It'southward besides worth noting that while these iii screens serve the same purpose in their respective apps, they have wildly inconsistent design languages. This type of filter UI screen is nifty and should become a new UI paradigm across Apple apps— including in Apple Music.

Missing Features

  1. Smart Playlists/filters. Apple Music is still missing a Smart Playlist/filter system to sort through your Library and notice the music yous want. Apple keeps throwing curated playlists at us, but no thing how many "Hither's a playlist based on a mood or action or time of solar day that our Apple curator put together" type playlists that Apple provides, they will never be a substitute for the user actually being able to set his ain criteria to make up one's mind the music he wants to listen to. Curation is no substitute for smart filters. So many other start party Apple tree apps have introduced tag/filter systems, similar Reminders, Notes, and Apple Maps. Even Fitness and the Apple tree Store app have a filter characteristic (encounter in a higher place images). Apple Music needs something similar.
  2. Continuity. There's all the same no handoff between devices. After all these years, your iPhone, iPad, and Mac are still siloed off from each other in terms of music playback. The HomePod and HomePod mini are the only Apple tree devices where you tin can continue from 1 device to another.
  3. Pinned music. There really ought to be some sort of 'Favorites' section where users tin can pivot their favorite artists, albums, and songs for easy admission.
  4. Star Ratings. Star Ratings should be available next to each line item, rather than having stars buried in the menu system. Stars are incredibly important for two reasons. Firstly, they serve the base of operations human desire to rate things as a fashion to organize and make sense of the world around us (i.e. we charge per unit apps, restaurants, Uber drivers, movies, video games, and then on). Secondly, Star Ratings serve as a sort of flag on your music, so when you're scrolling through an album or playlist, you tin immediately encounter and be reminded of the music y'all love. This feature is absolutely fundamental to the same Group A of music listeners.
  5. Tags and filters. This works in conjunction with #1. The app actually needs a tag/filter system. So many other Apple offset party apps have added prissy filter systems where you can select criteria to delve down into what you're looking for. Maps, Fettle, the Apple Shop app, and several others take filters, and even Notes and Reminders now having Tags and Smart Lists. Apple Music badly needs something similar to use music metadata (Artist, Genre, Year, Star Rating, Final Played etc…) to sift through and delve into the music you desire to hear. For example, a user should be able to select "metal", "1985", and "three stars and above" and become a dynamic playlist of all his favorite metal songs from 1985. Change the criteria and it immediately populates a new dynamic playlist. The idea is that yous become the kind of functionality from classic iTunes Smart Playlists, but dramatically simplified for iOS as dynamic filters, where you lot don't have to create/manage/delete playlists, and tin can simply set filters whenever you want. Apple Maps recently added something coordinating for POIs, and this would be great for Apple tree Music. It would be and then simple from a user'southward perspective, and yet so powerful with so many possibilities.
  6. Tags and filters (continued). With the above filters, yous could select your favorite artist, select iii+ Stars, and immediately exist presented with a playlist of all your favorite songs by your favorite creative person. That kind of functionality sure beats having to rely on 'Essentials' playlists. Sometimes you lot desire to play your own favorites past an artist, not the favorites from a random Apple curator who likely has unlike tastes than yous do.
  7. Audio type. At that place's no unproblematic manner to switch betwixt 256/Lossless/Atmos. I enjoy Atmos spatial audio files (well, some of them), simply spatial audio is non a replacement for regular stereo; it'southward complementary. It should be treated as a different season, much like how artists have studio recordings and live recordings, which are divide beasts. Aforementioned thing here. At that place should exist a manner to swap between stereo and spatial with a simple button. Having to dabble in Settings is non sufficient. There should exist a quick toggle between 256 AAC, Lossless, and Atmos, where you but tap that bluecoat on the Now Playing screen to alternate between the file types. Currently, if yous have one file type, you have to manually delete it, change the setting to the other blazon (i.e. Lossless to Atmos or vice versa) and then manually redownload the vocal. It's a pain.
  8. Genres. Genre categorizations are terrible. For as long as I can call up, there have been overlapping or duplicative genres (i.due east. "Hip Hop" vs "Hip-Hop" vs "Hip-Hop/Rap"), and so on the other side of the spectrum, some genres are mode too broad, like "Culling", which can mean almost anything. I believe the entire genre categorization method should be replaced with a keyword system, where artists/albums/songs can be given multiple labels, either by Apple Music curators, by the individual user, or perhaps fifty-fifty crowdsourced amid all Apple Music users. That fashion, multiple genres or descriptors can be used to tag each artist/anthology/vocal. This goes back to a broad bespeak of mine regarding how Apple Music's organizational system is as well rigid. Everything almost Apple Music obeys a nested folder structure, when it should obey a tag structure. The Music Library should feel permanent and the sorting and organizational tools should exist light and dynamic. Apple tree Music is the precise opposite. The organizational tools are potent and heavy, while the music library has no permanency or solid footing to it. This applies to genre listings, likewise.
  9. Viewing and editing metadata. Equally of iOS 15, Apple Photos at present allows you to view the metadata past selecting a photo and swiping up. Music should have something similar. This is no longer the early iPhone days when the Music app on your device was a mere companion to the main iTunes app on your Mac/PC. Now Apple Music on iPad/iPhone is a chief experience, so it needs more powerful tools and greater access to info similar music metadata.
  10. Low data density. The iPhone app doesn't display vocal lengths and I can't view Star Ratings. They should be visible on each line so that you can see how yous rate everything, every bit that acts as a sort of flag on your music. Instead, you have to dive deep into the menu system to meet and conform Star Ratings, which renders them nearly useless. Only as in the higher up point, this is no longer but a companion app to your PC, so it needs to exist more than powerful and perhaps more than customizable with greater information density. That includes making song lengths and Star Ratings visible on every line item.
  11. Viewing analytics, such as playback stats. This is self-explanatory. In that location'southward a whole lot of bully information like this in iTunes that is not visible in Apple Music. Information technology'southward time to pull dorsum the curtain a little, as your iPhone is no longer a mere satellite device to your Mac, and it hasn't been for a number of years at present.
  12. Year-end summaries. The Apple Music 'Replay' playlists are fun, but I don't think information technology's whatsoever secret that Apple Music users are envious of the Spotify characteristic. It's become about a cultural event, where Spotify users discuss their stop-of-year stats, while Apple Music users are left out in the common cold.
  13. More View/Sort/Grouping options across your Library. This is ane surface area where tertiary political party music apps like Marvis Pro are far meliorate than Apple'south app. I don't await Apple to offering that insane level of customizability, as those types of power user features are often left to 3rd parties. Even so the current offerings are far too limiting. When I'g going through my Library, at that place ought to be a whole lot more than means to View, Sort, and Grouping content. As mentioned earlier, this also includes the ability to pinch to resize content.

I previously wrote a popular slice nearly how Apple finally solved its iPad problem by subtly but comprehensively reimagining the iPad's unabridged grade factor. The iPad Pro used to exist a refrigerator-toaster, to use the classic Tim Cook parlance. It tried to be both a tablet and a laptop in one, as exemplified by the 2018 folding Smart Keyboard Page. It was a poor laptop because the keyboard was mediocre, it had no trackpad, and there was no pointer organization. Similarly, information technology wasn't a groovy tablet considering that folio instance added weight and thickness, and wasn't very nice to hold, with the keyboard keys folding over the back and remaining exposed, feeling like y'all were belongings an accordion.

Apple tree solved this in 2020. It added a comprehensive (and beautifully designed) arrow system and it released the Magic Keyboard, which essentially separated the iPad out into two distinct 'modes' — it had a not bad keyboard and trackpad for laptop manner, and then y'all would only popular the iPad off the magnetic dorsum to bring it into tablet mode. Apple too improved landscape support and added UI paradigms like sidebars and drop-downwards menus. It after followed that up with an fantabulous keyboard shortcut system to amend things farther.

Substantially, instead of a mediocre refrigerator-toaster, the iPad Pro was at present a great refrigerator that transformed into a great toaster. Instead of trying to be ii things at the aforementioned time, it became a quantum superposition of 2 different things. It became one thing that transformed into another thing, depending on what you needed. That made the feel and then much improve in both 'modes'. Information technology's a fantastic tablet, and while in that location'south still room to amend, it'south becoming a formidable laptop for a whole lot of people. That'south a big modify from where it was simply a couple years agone.

That's what Apple Music needs to be.

Instead of serving Group A and Group B, each in a half-hearted way, Apple tree Music should go total throttle in both directions. It should exist a streaming music service that is meliorate than Spotify and it should exist a library management tool that is meliorate than iTunes ever was. And it should seamlessly switch between these two 'modes'.

Some would fence that Apple, as a company, caters to the mainstream and non to enthusiasts in whatsoever direction, but I disagree. Apple is such a successful company considering it is able to provide astonishing tools to the enthusiasts, while simultaneously beingness able to simplify and abstract away the complication so that it can appeal to the mainstream. Look at the whole Mac situation. After spending several years trying to water downward and mainstream-ify the experience for enthusiasts (i.e. encounter the 2013 'trashcan' Mac Pro and the 2016 MacBook Pro), Apple tree realized that that was a error, and so corrected the path with the splendid 2019 Mac Pro belfry and 2021 MacBook Pro, which both launched to rave reviews and are universally considered to be improvements over their more mainstream-oriented predecessors.

The bespeak is that when you take multiple groups to appeal to, taking a middle-of-the-road approach doesn't satisfy whatsoever of them; it merely waters down the experience for everyone. Apple clearly came to this realization several years ago with hardware, and has been making fantastic hardware products ever since. Hopefully we see that same procedure play out with software next — and Apple tree Music is a prime candidate for this transformation.

I'thou looking forrad to what'southward in store next for Apple Music. Hopefully we encounter a big improvement in iOS sixteen, iPadOS 16, macOS thirteen, and the addition of a Windows app. WWDC 2022 can't come soon enough!

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Source: https://medium.com/@heyyoudvd/apple-music-is-in-rough-shape-heres-how-to-fix-it-55f25d25fd20

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