Albums 6.0 - A New Icon for a New Era
New features, a look back at five years of Albums, and another excuse for why there's no Mac app
I’ve been double-checking this math every way I know how, and it keeps coming up the same. The first version of Albums came out in August 2019, and it’s September 2024 now. That’s five years. The first version of Albums was for iOS 12, the current version (for a few more hours, at least) is iOS 17. One new version of iOS every year, that’s five years. Albums really must be five years old, god damn!
Five years in is a nice, round time for a big ole’ update. A new era, if you will. The Albums 6.0 era The icon is new. A major multi-year architecture transition is finally complete. There are a bunch of new features. New ways to support the app. One new thing there still isn’t, I regret to tell you, is a Mac app. Details on the dealbreaker bug preventing that, all the rest of that stuff, and more, here in Music App Stuff #18. This one’s kind of long, sorry!
Table-Setting and a Chart
I’m always going on about how Albums is both a player and library manager. At the core, I think of Albums as being for three things: enjoying, exploring, and organizing your music. And by you I mean me. But hopefully you, too, obviously.
Five years since I used the built-in Music app as my daily driver. A happy occasion indeed. While deep in meditation on the subject I found my mind wandering over my history of tools I’ve used for those three purposes, then making a spreadsheet, then writing a Python script to output an .svg of a chart inspired by the classic Wikipedia band member chart design. Here is that chart.
Hey, wait, no, don’t focus on the rampant decade+ of piracy before becoming a law-abiding Apple Music subscriber. Focus on the beautiful diversity of software and hardware that’s fueled a decades-long love of music and computers. This shit is deeply personal. Thanks for being here. Let’s talk about some new features.
New Features
Album Notes
Ever had a thought, feeling, recollection, first impression, or anything else you’ve wanted to remember about an album? Add a note! Notes can be added to albums or individual listening sessions. For example, I’ve got a note that says “driving through Colorado mountains” on a listening session from August 2019 for an Ezra Furman album because… that’s a memory I have and would like to remember. I’ve also started making notes about whatever blog, website, or tweet led me to discover a given album. Notes are searchable and you can add “contains/does not contain” filters for them when filtering collections.
Updates to Collection Pages
Despite the great Albums Singularity on the chart above, I still found myself toggling over to the built-in app to get information about an artist. Not anymore! Artist (and Record Label, Musician, Producer, etc.) pages now show an image and biography, courtesy of various sources (last.fm, Discogs, MusicBrainz). Artist pages also show Similar Artists, which I’ve found to be a very quick way to contextualize an artist who’s new to me.
Discography Browser
Picture this: you’re listening to an album and you think it sounds just fantastic. You pop over to the Info tab to find that it was produced by, say, the great Sarah Tudzin of illuminati hotties. “I bet she’s produced some other bangers,” you muse correctly, tapping into her Producer collection, then hitting the Browse Discography button and adding a bunch of stuff to your “Check Out Later” tag. Cool right?
Page Redesigns and Quality of Life Updates
Albums 6.0 completes the transition I began in Albums 4.0 (3 years ago(!)) to have every screen in the app be built entirely in SwiftUI. If you don’t know what that means, just know there’s two ways to make iOS apps: an old and busted way (UIKit) and a new and improved way (SwiftUI). If that upsets you, I say: SwiftUI forever, SwiftUI rocks, when you diss SwiftUI you diss yourself. There, that’s my hot iOS development take.
Going into 6.0 there were two screens that were still crusty-ass UIKit. The Tag Picker and the extremely crucial and incredibly complicated Album page. Tag Picker? No problem. A matter of a couple of hours and I had a fully functional replacement, plus a new Recent Tags section at the bottom to help out our poor little thumbs. There are a few more of those quality-of-life-type improvements sprinkled across different screens, as well as improved scrolling and search performance throughout the app.
The Album page took a matter of weeks, many weeks, but man was it worth it. It looks pretty much the same as before on iPhone, but it’s totally redesigned on the iPad. Check out that tracklist table! The credits screen also makes better use of the available space. Sure would look good on a Mac, huh?
Where’s the Mac App????
This was going to be the year of Albums on the Mac! All the dealbreaker bugs I had personally experienced had been fixed, things were looking good, there was just one thing. My album-focused iOS Developer compatriot Adrian, the developer of Longplay, had been posting on Mastodon about a bug in the Mac version of his app where playback stutters when the app is in the background. Adrian uses the same API as me, and that didn’t bode well. But maybe he was just unlucky?
Nope! That bug is present in the Mac version of Albums, which otherwise exists and works, and it suuuuuucks. Music drops out/stutters for about two seconds every 90 seconds. I can’t release it as long as this bug is present. I’ve filed a bug report (FB13931797 in case any Apple-types are reading) and… now we wait. Seems to be pretty deep down there in the macOS audio stack. In the meantime, I’m refining the Mac app for whenever the day comes.
New Icon(s)
Albums has a new icon! Actually, 16 of them. Technically, 48 of them counting all the tintable variations. With icon tinting coming to iOS 18, I knew it was finally time for a new icon. Luckily, I’d already been working with a talented designer named Vaughn Chambers on the icon for the other app I alluded to in the last newsletter and is still going to happen some day but there’s only so much time in the day! It was love at first sight when he sent me the vinyl database icon. I hemmed and hawed about colors, but every time I came back to the black and white, it just seemed so classic and clean.
For the first time in Albums history, there are several alternate designs and color schemes to choose from, so head over to Settings -> App Icons and choose the one you like the best.
Capitalism, pts I and II
Taking a page from my friend Larry Michaels’s excellent music curation newsletter Genius Dot Com, I’d like to briefly turn our attention to matters of capitalism.
First, I’ve freed a handful of features from behind the paywall. Immersive UI, sorting collections, and viewing the current day in the Release Feed no longer require Albums Premium. I want everyone to get as much value out of Albums as possible, even if I don’t see a cent.
Ah, but I wouldn’t mind a cent, no, not at all. You see, album-focused library-management tools don’t exactly rake in the dough. But that’s okay! I haven’t talked about it in these pages before, but I have a day job. Incidentally if you happen to know a non-profit looking to make the most out of their data and systems, I contend there ain’t a better consulting firm out there doing it than we are at Cake Byte.
But my goodness, have you seen the price of things these days? Expensive! The way I see it, the more money you make, the better. Know what I mean? To that end, I’ve introduced two new annual tiers of Albums Premium, one at $34.99/year and one at $74.99/year. They get you absolutely nothing over the standard plans of $1.99/month and $18.99/year, which are not changing in price. They’re just a way for you to give a little more to the person behind your favorite tool for enjoying, exploring, and organizing your music, just like leaving a tip on the Settings → About screen. If you happen to have the means and interest in doing so, you can change your subscription level here. If not, forget I said anything! Do not be mean to me or anyone else on the internet!
Wow, that was a long one! Thanks for sticking with me. I hope you enjoy the new update. If you do, tell your friends/internet acquaintances about Albums! Maybe leave a rating or review on the App Store? Okay, bye bye now, thank you for choosing Albums the App.
Thank you for continuing to tinker on the Mac app version of this :)