The idea of Apple offering a streaming subscription service to the entire iTunes library has been a long dream and it’s finally here. This morning I opened up the App Store, eagerly downloading the latest update to iTunes and hit the all important subscribe button, committing to an $11.99 (AUD) individual monthly plan, $1 less than Spotify’s premium service [edit: they’re equally priced when purchased through the Spotify website].

It’s worth noting I’m using Apple Music through iTunes as I’m running the iOS 9 beta on my iPhone and it won’t be available until the next beta, so this is a step-back in time having not used iTunes for many years.

It’s a great way of finding the artists you love

The introduction to Apple Music is certainly different to any other music streaming service’s on-boarding process. Having previously used Google’s all-access, Rdio, and long-time Spotify user, this process seemed more personable and focused on the art and preferences of your music taste, rather than the functional interface of the player. I was pretty surprised to see it finding my music taste pretty quickly, serving up a collection triple J hits in a few clicks, and then focusing down onto particular artists.

The on-boarding worked quite well, I picked alternative, dance, and electronica: which populated my “for you” with artists such as PNAU, Justice, The Chemical Brothers and LCD Soundsystem — perfect and right on point. I can’t help but think this kind of on boarding process is mis-focused, iTunes as a mental model (for me at least) has been two things: my music + a store to buy music. After on-boarding there’s this strange middle level of music you can play, but it’s not your music and it’s not for sale. It’s presented to look like a store, where nothing is for sale and “your library” isn’t really yours.

Ignoring the actual interface of iTunes (which for the record I think is convoluted and over-contextualised), the new Apple Music part of it is missing something quite important: It’s not even called Apple Music. Quite simply, in terms of a user experience there is nothing to indicate or distinguish the streaming service from the library of music you already have. I get the impression Apple is deliberately trying to blur the distinction between where you’re getting your music from and rather let you just enjoy it as an art; the concept is great but it fails as a functional interface and mental model.

This navigation has no hierarchy or sense-of-place

Take the “for you” tab that now appears under the “music” section of the “library” part of iTunes window (yes, there is a massive issue with navigation here).

I can click on a track to listen to it straight away, ad free, and in quite impressive quality (audiophiles need-not-comment). There’s however no way to not-like the suggestions it’s picked. For some reason I have the best of Britney Spears as the top recommendation with no way to tell Apple, errr- no thanks. In one click the album cues in and plays but there’s not really anything else useful here; I can’t save the album on hover like Spotify, I can’t create a playlist by dragging the album into the sidebar like Google Music. Everything is hidden in drop-downs and nothing is obvious. Even as a minimalist designer, Apple’s efforts to hide everything without any interface on-boarding fails as a good user experience, especially as I consider myself a technically-savvy user.

The “New” Section

Aside from the “For You”, there’s also a “New” and a “Connect” tab as part of the service. The “New” section looks similar to the browse section of Google Music, showing a plethora of albums sorted categorically. There’s so much content available, but scrolling through the interface it just stops. You get to see about 100 albums and then nothing. I would’ve expected an infinite scroll, or a pointer to other areas for music. The splash page feels quite sandboxed from the service and it’s certainly difficult to distinguish what you’re supposed to be doing here compared the other discovery areas.

The “Connect” Section

Jumping into “Connect”, there’s something that feels quite ping about it. I was originally quite hopeful that this could finally not be its own platform but rather aggregate the other mediums in one central place to discover what your favourite artists are doing and sharing. One big problem: there’s no content. I’m not sure really how to follow artists, again there’s no on-bording or auto-follow prompt — just a few cards from Maroon 5 and Calvin Harris (who I didn’t actively follow). I’m really not sure what this section is all about anymore and why it’s part of iTunes. This feels more like an Instagram/Vine/Twitter/SoundCloud mash up and the card like UI is distinctly mobile first. There’s probably no need to have this on the desktop, and I’d be surprised to see it’s traction on other platforms. It feels like someone from the Ping project won’t let their idea die.

iTunes Radio, is now just ‘Radio’

Then there’s radio, it’s lost the ‘iTunes’ branding in-front of it and works much the same as before. I gave the new 24/7 beats one station a listen this morning on the way to work. Other than the drop-out in the train tunnel, the quality of the streaming was incredible. Digital is very much the future of the radio business and the ability to stream globally 24/7 is an interesting logistical and demographical challenge. Listening to Beats 1 for 30 min quickly reminded me of why I don’t listen to broadcast radio. The host was obnoxious (Ebro Darden, not Zane), the music is all pop and the cut-aways and overlays meant I was listening to someone speaking about music, not actual music on my commute. Beats 1 is clearly a big experiment for the future of digital broadcast and I actually hope it pays off. I would love to see Apple open this platform up as a way of local radio stations, or just passionate people, to have a way of broadcasting using the technology and licensing agreements already in place (Triple J — I’m looking at you).

Spotify lets you subscribe to user curated playlists

Also I don’t really listen to whole albums anymore, Spotify does a great job of user and software curated playlists based on your interests and you can subscribe to those playlists and they update dynamically — it’s really neat. Every week the ABC push new songs to the triple-j Hitlist and they’re updated and synced offline to my phone. In Apple music I can’t see any user curated playlists yet, let alone the ability to subscribe to ones that update.

There are clearly some things to iron out, and Apple is notorious for winning users over with second releases and tighter integrations. It’s all very well to complain about the issues faced on day one, so for the next version, here’s what I’d do.

Firstly, it should be it’s own section of iTunes — not muddled in with music that you own, music that’s in the cloud and music that you subscribe to. I expected an “Apple Music” tab to added next the the “your music”, “movies”, “TV-shows” and store icons. It’s a completely different model both mentally and commercially and the blurred distinction isn’t doing anyone any favours. The only way I could see this working well is to remove your entire iTunes library and commit to Apple music, together it’s a mess.

A few additions but nothing says “I’m streaming this”

The next thing is distinguishing browse/discover from play/my music. Spotify has a really nice model where browse is all about their entire catalogue, and “for you” sits inside there. Cognitively it makes sense, as the music you like should be a sub-set of the entire catalogue on offer. Moving the navigation model to have a pattern that drills downwards would reflect the model the music industry has been using, well-forever. Starting with genres > artists > albums > songs, there’s already a mental model for music, so why change it?

The player is mostly good, it’s the same simple interface familiar to iTunes but it’s missing the functions that streaming services need. Downvoting tracks and a “show in apple music” (rather than store) would be great additions.

The ellipsis interaction doesn’t do very much

Hover states are for the most part a terrible interaction to rely on, but when you can target the device and input method they can be useful and allow the UI to stay clean visually. The problem with Apple’s use is that, well, they don’t do anything. Hovering over an album gives you a play button and an ellipsis and selecting that ellipsis gives you share — not super useful. How about putting a plus button to add to library, start album radio, start artist radio and maybe even follow the artist on connect!

Which one is play, which one opens the album, which one scrolls the carousel?

One of the simplest UI issues is the play button looks like a carrousel which has been mashed with cover-flow and not scrollable. It’s not obvious how to move through the somewhat fragmented usage of carousels (there’s no sense of place or a clear purpose in the way they’re being used). The triangles and chevrons often appear right next to each other; clicking the wrong one will clear your current track queue and start playing Dr. Dre, instead of scrolling through the likes of Taylor Swift or Florence & the Machine. I’d push those play buttons in the centre of the artwork and remove those pesky carousels no-one uses.