Suppose I am playing an album (e.g., The Essential Billie Holiday) and I want to see what other titles are available for this artist, classified according to whether or not they are in my library and whether they are full-length albums or singles. In 1.7, it was a simple matter of scrolling down maybe one page. But, in 1.8:
- First I need to scroll down through the track listings for the current album (4 swipes in the Billie Holiday example).
- I arrive at More from Billie Holiday (sometimes this section is called Selected Discography … it seems to vary from artist to artist). This shows a subset of the titles available for this artist, selected according to some unknown algorithm, with no indication of which are full-length albums and which are singles.
- To view the full discography, it appears that I need to (i) swipe right through the albums in the More from section to reach the View discography link (six swipes for Billie Holiday), or (ii) back out of the album page, select the artist, and tap on Discography.
- When I get to the discography, I get to a page that separates out Main albums and Singles and EPs, like the old default in 1.7. But, to separate out those titles that are in my library, I need to tap on the small library icon next to Focus.
- If I am listening to the only title for the artist, nothing will appear in this section, and I’m left to wonder if this is really the only title, or if I have failed to find the discography in the ridiculous chaos of these pages.
In short, achieving the goal set out in my first sentence seems to involve a great deal more scrolling, tapping and head scratching than I needed to do in version 1.7. This is a big step backward that should have been flagged in any rudimentary attempt at beta testing. Wait, maybe this is the beta version!