I’m a big fan of AppleTV & Apple Music. I use them both daily. Yesterday I discovered an artist while out on a walk while listening to one of Apple’s suggested playlists: “Zone In”. I played a couple tunes by the artist on the iPhone. Today I opened Music on the AppleTV and there, in recently listened songs were a couple by that artist. I played one then wanted to play more music by the artist. But as far as I can tell, there’s no way to jump to that artist. Searching via “Find more songs by this artist” does not work. There’s no button to push.

No_artist

No option to view the artist! The first song, when selected, showed the album cover art and the “… More” button. I looked there and no go. The options were Delete, Play Next, Play Later, Create Station”. Same thing for another of his albums. Hmmm.

While looking at that screen it occurred to me to try Siri on the remote. So, I pressed the Siri button and asked for more music by this artist. Nope, that function does not work in that way. Interesting because I can, from that screen in Music use the Siri button and, for example, get a list movies staring Clive Owen. TV queries also work. But ask for more music from the currently displayed artist does not. Grrrrrrrr.

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Ah, What’s this?

I eventually found it but I think this is one of those features that is not very easily discovered. Turns out I had added both of these to my library while using my iPhone. When I did eventually discover (see image above) a way to look at the artist by clicking the album art on the now playing screen then clicking the … then clicking “Go to Artist” I was able to access his other albums. I clicked one of those albums and the screen for that album was very different from the others.

Artist

This screen included a button for “Go to Artist” below the cover art. The difference was that I had not previously added this to my library. At least, this is one difference that I noticed. Maybe there are other variables such as, did I mark the song “Loved”? I’m not certain what the rules are that will change the options presented on different screens.

I tend to think of myself as someone pretty capable of navigating these sorts of things but this took me awhile. That said, I’ve not used Music as much on the TV as I have on the iPhone/iPad. Maybe it is a question of spending more time using this particular app but that’s the point. There is a certain level of discoverability expected. The more a user has to work at this sort of thing the more frustrating it becomes and sometimes they just give up.

Seems to me that there are some improvements to be made here.