I, like any user of web applications, am a creature of habit.
I like to do things my way no matter what, because I am comfortable with my habits and, often most importantly, faster at using my habits to get things done faster.
Take my music.
I love music. In the office, I have Spotify open and running just about every minute of the day. I’m more than happy to pay my $10 a month for unlimited streaming.
I have my habits when it comes to Spotify and especially how I add music to playlists. I’m a playlist fiend and have literally hundreds of playlists.
I’ve read a lot about Apple Music, the new streaming service looking to dethrone services like Spotify, Rdio, and Pandora. As a happy Spotify customer, I saw no need to learn this new way to find and listen to music. I like my Spotify. I like my habits.
Curiosity finally got the best of me, and I started my free 3-month Apple Music trial last night. Signing up was easy, as I could use my iTunes account. Once created, I was asked a few questions and off I went to discover some music.
I started with a simple test to see how easy (or hard) it was to accomplish a simple task in both services.
For this experiment, I decided to add a track from Scottish rockers Biffy Clyro to a playlist called “Mon the biff!”
First up, my trusty companion, Spotify. I like that in Spotify, I can always see my playlists on the side of the main window. No matter what music rabbit hole I end up down, I can quickly and easily jump back out to my playlists.
For me as a user, the fastest way to get a track into a playlist is to drag it into the playlist I want. You can see my habit there – and how it requires me to sometimes perform an extra scroll or three if the playlist I’m looking for is not in the viewable area, but easy for me to deal with.
Now, here’s the same process repeated at Apple Music.
Apple Music doesn’t make it easy for me, the user, to add a song to a playlist.
For an individual track, it’s pretty easy using the menus, but I couldn’t figure out how to drag a song into a playlist, either from an album or the currently playing area. Both of those things I can do in Spotify.
That has to be challenging for software and web application designers and builders – the fact that users are set in their ways and something as petty as not being able to drag a track into a playlist has set off my relationship (and a potential tenner) off on the wrong foot.
I’ve got 3 months to try out Apple Music. I will give it a fair shake, but I’m stuck in my habits.
Bonus: here’s the “Mon the Biff!” playlist in Spotify and Apple Music.