I enjoy being annoyed, which is why I subscribe to Apple Music. Apple seems to enjoy annoying people, by moving things around and generally not fixing the most confusing parts of the app. A match made in heaven.

CarPlay

I know, starting this list with CarPlay. We’re already in the weeds. I don’t have an unlimited data plan. Apple Music just does not care. It will start up the radio station I was listening to 3 days ago when I connect my phone to my car. It can’t wait to guzzle up my data plan.

Every single time I want to pick a song, I have to navigate to the library, scroll to the bottom, and tap on Downloaded. There is no way to make this the default. There is no way to say “only display downloaded music” at an app level.

As of iOS 26, this is no longer an issue, but previously, the CarPlay version of downloaded music would display every album that had even a single downloaded song. It would display every playlist that had a single downloaded song. This was fine, I guess, except that it was different from the app on my phone. Or, even any other platform. It was just a CarPlay thing. Neat. Why was this the case for so long? Did Liquid Glass finally show them the way?

Apple Music the service vs. Apple Music the app

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. For some reason, I’m made aware of the gap (?!) between pages in the Apple Music app where I’m using the app vs the service. Despite these being presented as one in the same, I must manually hop between them.

On an album in my library, if I’d like to see that artist or album in Apple Music (the service), I need to open the 3 dot menu and select “Open in Apple Music.” This is a WILD thing to say, considering that I’m currently running Apple Music and the album is already open. Also, I am regularly opening this menu. You know it’s bad when I’m reliant on a dropdown just to navigate an app.

For a little bonus fun, you can accidentally select “Open in iTunes Store,” and find yourself trapped in a page with no navigation, your only option is to buy a single for $1.29. At least the occasional nostalgia hit is fun.

The Curious Case of the Backwards Playlist

One good thing that Apple has added is a “Favorites” playlist. You can add items to it using the star icon on a song. I like to use this to save songs that I want to listen to later or sort into a playlist. All was well and good until this playlist started playing in reverse order one day on my Mac. Instead of going to the next song, it would go to the previous song. If I played the first song, it would play and then stop.

I tried a number of ridiculous ways to remedy this, and went on long dives into the internet, trying to find someone else stuck this way. The only way I found to fix it was to remove every song from the playlist and start over. Refreshing, of course, but at what cost?

Where did my station go? What happened to my mood?

Apple Music loves to rearrange. Lest you forget that it’s not an app on your computer, it will reposition sections and menus on random days without requiring a software update. What whimsy!

I used to use the stations feature pretty regularly. On the Stations page, it had a section for recently played stations, so I could pick up where I left off pretty easily. This is now gone. Where did it go? Why did it go? I can find the recently played stations on the Home page, but they are intermingled with other things I’ve listened to.

I also used to use the moods pretty regularly. The chill section was nice to relax to. This was on the Browse page (which is now New, despite the fact that I’ve previously listened to many of the things contained therein), but disappeared one day. You can now scroll through the long, long list on the Search page and find it there. Not chill!

A recommendation engine for birds

On a higher level, I can’t believe that Apple Music’s recommendation engine hasn’t improved at all since I signed up. Look, it probably has in the background, but have I noticed a change? No.

The Home screen is full of suggested music. They are both so generic and specific as to be useless. It will suggest albums that are already in my library. Albums that I listened to a mere hours before. Thanks? I’m pretty aware of those. It will suggest groups of albums in sections as generic as “Indie.” Wow, how interesting! I had not heard of this “Indie” before! Where else could I find this genre?

My favorite piece of the recommendation engine is new music. It is both incredibly timely and aloof at the same time. I am charmed by it. An artist that I listened to a couple of times will get a push notification, show up in recommendations, get a spot on the auto-generated New Music Mix playlist. However, a new song from Carly Rae Jepsen, one of my favorite artists? Never heard of her. Huh, we don’t seem to have—oh, wait, there it is, on her artist profile. She’s lucky I’m a big fan.

When I have used Spotify previously, I found their recommendations to be fantastic. I could just turn on music and enjoy it. Find a vibe and follow it. It was great. Apple Music is basically manual. If I don’t pick it out, it’s not happening.

On this point, it’s interesting that Apple struggles so much, as Apple Music is an area where they don’t have the same limitations around user data. Apple knows every song I’ve ever listened to. They know which albums I’ve hovered over, which artist pages I’ve routinely visited. They have my full iTunes purchase history. We go way back! Apple Music is the one place where they have a ridiculous amount of info about me, and they’re not using it. Well, they’re not using it to help me, anyway.

Oh you want the album? Tap on the artist, dummy!

While you’re listening to a song, and you have the now playing view up, you can get to the song’s album by selecting the artist and then selecting “Go to Album.” You also have the option to open the artist’s page, which is the only action that makes sense when tapping on the artist.

Oh you want the lyrics? I thought you said “credits!”

On a Mac, you can open the three dot menu next to a song that’s currently playing, and then select “Get Info” to see the song’s lyrics, among other things. On iOS/iPadOS, you have to select “View Credits,” which then, inexplicably, includes a “View Lyrics” button. Love the priority of the artists, but I just want to know what Lady Gaga is saying. It’s “This kitten over here,” for the record.

Multi-device listening

I’m not even bothering with a silly headline. You know what I’m talking about. If I’m listening to a song on my computer and then pick up my phone and start listening to a song there, my computer pops up with a “More than one device…” warning with a button to “Upgrade.” Upgrade to a family plan. Not to a higher tier plan, the family plan. Great work everyone. I think we’re done here.

At bare minimum, you should be able to transfer the currently playing song from one device to another. You can, allegedly, do this with a HomePod, which makes this even weirder. I know that Apple Music, the service, knows what I’m currently listening to. It knows to pop up the warning message!

Split albums

This drives me crazy. Albums in my library will randomly split apart, displaying the cover twice. Open one of them, and it will be a part of the album. And the rest will be in the duplicate. I have to delete both of the albums, search for it, and add it again to fix this. I haven’t found another way to do it. Which leads me into my next complaint…

Remove an album from the library, it removes the songs from all custom playlists

I’d like to speak to whoever thought this was a good idea. I need to know who hurt them. I need to speak to whoever hasn’t fixed this, or made it an option. If I delete an album from my library, it will also remove those songs from any custom playlist.

I’ll often add an album to listen to it later, and then add songs that I particularly like to a playlist. Later, I will realize that I only really liked part of the album, so I’ll want to remove the album from my library. I could just leave it, yes! But I like to keep a refined list of albums that I actually like.

To fix this, I’ll usually remove the album and then manually add the songs back to the playlist, and just hope I can get it all synced back up again.

Back to the last point, sometimes I have to remove an album because it has split into two. Once I do that, the same problem happens where the songs are removed from playlists. I want to rip my hair out. These are software problems with software solutions, you’d think Apple could handle it. I wouldn’t recommend Apple Music to anyone I like.