Rene Ritchie, writing for iMore, walks you through everything you could ever want to do with Up Next, the Music app’s list of songs queued up to play next. Add songs to the queue (even while tracks are playing), delete from the queue, rearrange the queue, it’s all there.
Dave Wiskus is a self professed content creator and musician. You might know him as part of the team that built Vesper (a notes/ideas/to do collecting app) or as the vocalist and guitarist for an emerging band called Airplane Mode.
Creating music is hard. Promoting that music is even harder. Writing for his blog, Better Elevation, Dave lays out the difficulties in being an independent artist and his hopes for Connect, Apple’s second cut (remember Ping?) at a social network for artists and fans.
As Dave explains, the interface is rough, the Mac side feels like an afterthought, and the social side feels broken. All that said:
These are early days, and there’s hope. I don’t like complain-y posts where designers pick something apart and either offer no meaningful ideas or, worse, presumptuously redesign someone else’s work. So instead I’m going to break the fourth wall and make a simple suggestion to Apple: consult with independent musicians. Talk to bands who have succeeded on social media and see what worked for them. Talk to bands who have made great YouTube videos and find out how they get their audience to share stuff. Talk to bands who haven’t made it yet and ask what tools they might need to get there.
Or, maybe talk to a rock band from New York that happens to be made entirely out of iOS designers. We’d love to help.
And that’s exactly what happened. Dave’s post appeared yesterday, and by last night, he added this update:
I got an email from Trent Reznor this afternoon. Apple is aware of the growing pains and is working to address them.
I’d like to add in this suggestion. I’ve been working with an iOS developer named Matt Abras who makes a social music app called SoundShare. Matt is from Brazil, and SoundShare has a phenomenal following there. SoundShare gets social right. You can follow a musician, see what they are listening to, follow your friends, see what they are into. You can listen along with musicians you love, or with your friends.
To Trent, I’d say: Follow every move Dave Wiskus makes, learn from his pain, figure out what works for him. At the same time, download a copy of SoundShare, talk to Matt, get his take on social.
The potential for Connect is huge. But only if you get it right.
As I continue on my weight loss journey with Apple Watch, one thing people kept telling me is to stay hydrated. I thought I was, but when a friend recommended I try “AddWater”, I saw how much more I needed to drink. This is now part of my daily logging. It’s really simple and tracks all of your drinks, not just water.
Future Sonics are the absolute best in the industry. They are the first and original Ear Monitor (and own the trademark) and I company I trust with my hearing—and to deliver quality sound. I’ll have more details later, but I’m heading out for my first walk with these.
Many thanks to Designer News for sponsoring The Loop this week. A new and exciting website has recently been launched for web designers and developers.
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This Saturday, July 4, The Tour de France starts. And you should watch it.Granted, out of all the sports, professional cycling is, by far, the most impenetrable to outsiders. There are so many questions: Why do they all ride together in a group? Why doesn’t just one guy jump ahead and leave everyone behind? If there’s only one winner, why are there teams? What’s with the different jersey colors? Aren’t all of these guys on steroids? All understandable!
But read this humble primer to cycling’s most prestigious — and most grueling — race, and we promise that you will relish waking up at 8 am to watch a bunch of men in spandex ride bikes through the French countryside.
I love this race. The spectacle, the scenery, the drama, the controversies, all add up to a month of great viewing. I wouldn’t ride a bicycle if you paid me and the sport is, like boxing and The World Cup, tarnished (almost) beyond redemption but I’ll still watch every second of it.
Politico:
“The hot-dog contest is a physical manifestation of the concept of freedom,” said George Shea, the mastermind behind the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island. “The contest has come to represent the spirit of July 4th itself. That is why people go to the event. It is kind of a pilgrimage to the center of July 4th and the center of freedom.”More than 30,000 fans of the absurd will pack the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues to watch the annual feeding frenzy—the Super Bowl of eating contests.
I love America but I don’t understand the fascination with competitive eating in general and certainly not with this particular event. It’s actually been broadcast on ESPN. If this is the “spirit of July 4th”, I fear for that spirit.
Serenity Caldwell, writing for iMore.com, addressing the FUD flying around the internet on Apple Music and DRM:
Yes, Apple Music has a DRM component. Yes, it sucks, but it’s similar to every other streaming service. No, it does not overwrite the files on your Mac to make all your music DRM-laden. For those Googling in a panic, here’s the deal.
Great post. At the heart of this issue is the thought (incorrect) that Apple somehow adds DRM to any of your music files. Back up your music collection before you get started and you’ll still have all your music/video files, in their original state.
Damien McFerran, writing for Nintendo Life:
Before Sony entered the home console arena it worked with Nintendo on a CD-ROM drive for the SNES. The aim was to eventually release a combined console – called the PlayStation – which would play SNES carts and SNES CD-ROM games.
Of course, this never came to pass – at the 1991 CES Sony officially announced the system, only to discover that at the same event Nintendo confirmed that it was working with rival Philips instead. It was one of the most infamous double-crosses in video game history, but Sony would have its revenge by creating the stand-alone PlayStation system, a best-selling console which would end Nintendo’s dominance of the industry and establish the brand for years to come.
Great story. Click here for images of the prototype. So cool. Bizarre to see the Sony and Nintendo branding together like this.
Go to Bing, search for the term Pong. Click to start.
I’ve tested this (purely for scientific purposes) on my iPad and iPhone. Fun was had.
Apple Watch owner Dmitri built up this list of things he’s done with his Apple Watch.
I’ve done some of these things, certainly, but there are other things I hadn’t even thought of. All of these things are doable, all good to know, and this list is worth passing along to anyone who asks you, “What can you do with an Apple Watch?”
P.S. In case you were wondering, here’s how to use your Apple Watch as a remote to take a selfie.
If you’ve been spending time listening to Beats 1, you’ve no doubt heard a song playing, loved it, but missed the name of the song or artist. Perhaps you’ve tuned in in the middle of a song and didn’t get to your screen in time to catch the name.
No matter, there is a solution. Follow @Beats1Plays on Twitter. The account posts the artist and song title of every song played. And your Twitter client can tell you exactly what time the post was made, how long ago the song played.
Pass this along.
Jonny Evans, writing for Computerworld, pulled together some Apple Music related tips and links from around the web. These are well assembled, useful, and interesting.
AT&T:
When you see the driver next to you looking at their phone, it’s no longer safe to assume they’re texting. New research1 from AT&T* shows nearly 4-in-10 smartphone users tap into social media while driving. Almost 3-in-10 surf the net. And surprisingly, 1-in-10 video chat.7-in-10 people engage in smartphone activities while driving. Texting and emailing are still the most prevalent. But other smartphone activity use behind the wheel is now common. Among social platforms, Facebook tops the list, with more than a quarter of those polled using the app while driving.
As a motorcyclist, this survey is not only disturbing but, sadly, not surprising. There’s not a day goes by I don’t see someone more focused on their phone than on their driving. There’s also generally not a day that goes by where I don’t have to take some kind of evasive action to avoid an accident with a distracted driver. Please, as AT&T is campaigning, “It Can Wait”.
Ars Technica:
By this point, fairy-tales about successful funding and horror stories of projects that end in abject failure or corruption have led most of us to recognize the volatility of any Kickstarter project. But lost between these two extremes is a long, sometimes confusing road that is invisible, and sometimes even inaccessible, to the mildly interested passersby. In today’s Kickstarter Web storefronts, projects appear so singular to their backers that any unplanned activity can seem more erratic and suspicious than it actually is. In most cases, though, delays are normal.This underreported grey area between funded and shipped (or sailed) isn’t necessarily something to loathe. Rather, it highlights many of the reasons crowdfunding is worth protecting—even if some of the practice’s worst contradictory forces are at play.
I’ve backed several Kickstarter projects over the last few years and have been universally disappointed for various reasons, not the least of which is failure to ship. I won’t be doing any more.
Good find by Federico Viticci.
Quartz:
It is broadcast 24 hours a day, with real people picking songs, introducing them, and conducting interviews. Everyone around the globe hears the same thing at the same time—a rarity for internet-based media, which is rarely experienced in sync. As a result, everyone can also discuss in real-time.It’s early, but tuning into Beats 1 on launch day and following along with other listeners on Twitter made it a fun, memorable, shared experience.
It’s hard to argue with the sentiment. Sure, some (many) don’t like the mix – “there’s too much ____ (insert music genre you dislike the most here)” but I’ve been listening to nothing but Beats 1 since the launch. The shared music aspect of it is really appealing to me. For the most part, I like the DJs. I especially like Julie Adenuga and her drum and bass mix. Sure, there are glitches and odd bits (the naughty language edits are particularly annoying) but, after only three days, it’s a remarkable achievement that will only get better, in my opinion.
I use the “Like” system in my music services all the time because I want it to learn from my listening habits and be more personalized for my tastes. However, it seems that every service uses this system in different ways, so I talked to Apple about how you should use likes with Apple Music.
First, let me tell you one of my big problems, or sources of confusion, with likes on streaming services. Let’s say I’m listening to a Metal station and a great song comes on, but I consider it to be Rock. Do I like it? I enjoy the song, but I’m afraid if I like it, more Rock songs will come on the Metal station, diluting it.
What if I don’t like it? Will it never show up again, even in Rock? Perhaps I should skip it, but is that equivalent to a “dislike”? These are the questions and concerns I had as I listened to Apple music.
So, here’s some guidance on what you should be doing.
Apple’s built in Radio stations are all handpicked songs. They are handpicked with a thought to what song is playing and what song comes after it. By doing this curation, Apple strives to make one song flow into the other so, hopefully, you won’t need to skip songs—or at least skip less often.
When you play a radio song, you will notice a heart—this is the like button. If you tap the heart, indicating you like that song, it does absolutely nothing to “tune” that station. Since the stations are human curated, there is no need for a tuning algorithm.
Tapping the heart does affect “For You,” the section of Apple Music that’s custom built with playlists, albums and songs tailored to your individual tastes. For You also takes into account music you add to your library and full plays you listen to. Skips aren’t really taken into account, because there are so many reasons you may skip a song—maybe you’re just not in the mood for it right now.
You can further tune the For You section. If you go to For You and there is a recommendation for an album that you just don’t like, tap and hold on the album. A menu will popup where you can choose “I Don’t Like This Suggestion,” allowing Apple Music to further learn about your musical taste.
Now, If you build a station yourself by searching for a band or song and tap “Start Station,” you’ll notice the heart changes to a star. In this instance, you can tune the station to your likes and dislikes.
Tapping the star gives you a “Play More Like This” or “Play Less Like This.” These choices can be made on a per station basis without worrying that you are affecting your overall enjoyment of a particular song or band.
Using these tips should give you finely tuned For You section and enjoyable custom radio listening experience in Apple Music.
M.C. Siegler, writing for Medium:
What do you listen to when you can listen to literally anything? For me, it’s often the same things over and over again. I hate choosing.
First world problem to the extreme, I know. But I’m clearly not the only one who feels this way as it has long been the selling point of the Beats music service (and what has made Pandora so great): choices made for you.
Beats 1 is the extreme extension of this. It’s a choice — one choice — made for everyone. This sounds draconian until you look at the flip side: everyone on the planet currently listening to Beats 1 is listening to the exact same thing. How cool is that? Actually, very cool.
Exactly.
Siri is a novelty. Siri is incredibly useful. Both of these things are true.
Whenever a new, funny answer to a Siri query (hey, it rhymes!) emerges, it is sure to make its way around the internet. One fine example is in this tweet from Aaron Paul:
Ask Siri “what is zero divided by zero?” RIGHT. NOW.
If you haven’t already, go ahead, it’s a fun answer. Not useful, but novel and funny. Most importantly, like all Easter eggs, finding and sharing this draws you in, builds a bond between you and Siri and, between you and the Apple ecosystem.
This same logic applies with useful queries as well. For example, try asking Siri this:
Play the top songs from 1970
Feel free to pick your favorite year. If you have Apple Music installed, Siri will reply with:
Now playing the top 25 songs from 1970…
and will build a playlist of the Billboard top 25 from that year, edited (of course) to include songs in the Apple Music collection.
Super useful, incredibly fun.
Which brings us to The Beatles. There is a gaping hole in Apple Music. A Beatles-sized hole. Ask Siri for the top songs of, say, 1964. You’ll get songs from 1964, certainly, but no songs by The Beatles, who OWNED the top of the charts back then. If you search Apple Music, you’ll get lots of Beatles music, but it’s always instrumentals and other covers.
A friend of mine who knows about such things, suggested that the agreement between Apple and Capitol Records is what’s known in the industry as an EBTB agreement. Everything But The Beatles. Here’s hoping that gets fixed.
This story has gone viral. It is tragic and bizarre. First, the accident:
A robot killed a factory worker at a Volkswagen plant in Germany, FT reports. The 21-year-old worker was installing the robot when it struck him in the chest, crushing him against a plate. He died after the incident.
Apparently, the worker was inside a safety cage designed to enclose the robot. For the safety cage to work, he needed to be outside the cage.
The twist:
Twitter users were quick to point out that the name of the FT reporter, Sarah O’Connor, is remarkably similar to Sarah Connor, hero of the “Terminator” franchise. She was not amused by the barrage of tweets about “Skynet” and reminded them of the serious nature of the situation and that someone had died.
Follow the headline link to read O’Connor’s tweets, as it became clear to her that she was being seen as a character in a “life imitates art” moment.
Tragic. Bizarre.
Really interesting essay from Shibel Mansour on the value of an app that you pay for. At the heart of his argument is this chart from xkcd, which shows you how much time you need to save on a repetitive task to make an initial time investment pay off.
Terrific read, well worth the time.
Solid piece from Kirk McElhearn, writing for MacWorld.
Take a look at the icon for the iOS 8.4 Music app, compare to the new iTunes 12.2 icon. The musical notes at the center of both icons appear (to my untrained eye, at least) to be identical. Interesting.
Bloomberg Business:
In the clip released Wednesday, Wozniak, who is played by Seth Rogen, confronts Jobs and accuses his partner of hogging the credit for their creations, and those of others. That never happened, he said.
“I don’t talk that way,” Wozniak said in an e-mailed response to questions. “I would never accuse the graphical interface of being stolen. I never made comments to the effect that I had credit (genius) taken from me.”
And:
Wozniak said he consulted with Sorkin, who won an Oscar for “The Social Network,” before the Jobs script was written, met the cast briefly and had dinner with Rogen, though he never asked to see the script.
“I do not think that would be appropriate,” Wozniak said, adding he was honored to be portrayed by a popular actor like Rogen. “It is the creative work of the producer and writer and actors and director and others.”
I am a huge Sorkin fan and (Gasp!) a bit of an Apple fan. I can’t wait to see this movie.
Merlin and Jim talk about Taylor Swift and heavy metal.
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It only took a couple of days using Apple Music for me to decide to cancel my Spotify and Rdio accounts. The process of cancelling went pretty smooth for both, although there were some problems for some Spotify subscribers who couldn’t get their subscriptions cancelled. I’m keeping Pandora for now, just in case Apple Music screws up for some reason, but I’m liking it so far.
Kirk McElhearn, writing on his blog about the difference between iTunes Match and iCloud Music Library:
Both match your iTunes library and store your purchases. Both allow you to access these files, and listen to them, on multiple devices. But with iTunes Match, when you download a matched or uploaded file, you get either the iTunes Store matched copy, or the copy that iTunes uploaded of your original file.
When you match and download files from iCloud Music Library, however, you get files with DRM; the same kind of files you get when you download files from Apple Music for offline listening.
The critical issue here is backing up your un-DRMed music files. Unlike iTunes Match, if you download matched un-DRMed files from iCloud Music Library, you’ll end up with a DRMed version of those files. To repeat this another way, if iCloud Music Library takes in a song file with no DRM and it has a DRM version of that same song, you’ll have no way to get back your original song file without DRM.
Back up your song library before you turn on iCloud Music Library, just to be safe.
The challenge was to build a game whose source would fit inside a tweet:
I challenge you to make a game whose source fits in a single tweet
And here’s one of the responses:
main(b){char s[9];b=0;for(;b<12&&(int)(s+5)!=(int)s;){b%4||gets(s+5);b<4&&(s[b]=’a’+rand()%4);putchar(“-x”[s[b++%4+5]==s[b%4]]);}}
Build it, run it, you’ll end up with this game here. Crazy.
Arnold Kim, writing for MacRumors, discovered this little gem.
In iOS 8.4, if you go into Settings > General > Restrictions, then disable Apple Music Connect, the Connect icon in the Music app will be replaced by your old friend Playlists.
I did this and it works, but I went back and re-enabled Connect, since I’m still exploring it.
[H/T Matt Abras]