The Simplest Apple Music Fix 

There’s been a lot of talk about Apple Music in the past week (the link is to a good example).

I actually like Apple Music. It mostly works for me. I have what I think is a reasonably large music collection (but I’d guess I’m just on the upper bound of average, maybe). I listen to lots of music, both stuff from my music and from Apple Music.

I find the biggest problem is the concept of “my library” vs. Apple Music. I often listen to music and click the little heart to “love” a song, whether it’s on Beats One, or an artist radio, or just because I was checking out a new song I heard on a podcast.

The problem is, I have no idea how to find those songs again. When you create a playlist in iTunes, you can only find tracks that are in your collection. So, if you want to do anything with that song, you have to first add it to your collection, then you can heart it.

If you heart it before you add it to your collection, your collection doesn’t count it as “loved”.

There’s lots of really odd behaviors around rating/hearting/interacting with songs that are not in your library.

I think the simplest fix would be that if I’ve done anything to a song (heart it, rate it, add it to a playlist), that it’s part of “My Library”. If iTunes (or the Music app) want to have a switch/toggle to only show music that’s local to your collection, go for it. But the fact that I can’t just treat Apple Music’s library like my own library forces me to think about the order of how I act with music, and that’s more friction than I should have.

In doing that, it would also change the way search works. Why not have search just graphically show you which music is on your device vs. in the cloud?

There’s too many places where I have to think about whether I’m dealing with Apple’s music or my music.

Just take that away.