[gottabekd]

Originally Posted by kunkstyle

Under the "New" tab, scroll down. There' Activity Playlists, Apple Editors Playlists, and what I assume you're looking for, "Curator Playlists".

Granted it's not overly intuitive, but I can't say I found it that confusing. No idea how you're bringing up the purchasing option vs streaming.

I didn't give it a lot of effort before. I have very lightly used iTunes in the past few years, so probably got tripped up by some pretty obvious things.

Someone told me "Josh Homme has a radio show on Apple Music". I wanted to quickly find it. I had trouble. I retraced my steps here to explain the confusion I ran into. Going through this slowly, I certainly understand it better, but I still feel the contextual UI is atrocious.

So, finding Josh Homme's radio show.

• I opened up iTunes and typed Josh Homme in the search box. Hmm, I gives me two choices to search "My Library" or "iTunes Store". Well, I don't have Josh Homme's radio show in my library....so I guess store?
• The results have a lot of songs listed for purchase, as well as albums for purchase. Well, not even close to what I want.
• Oh yea, on the top left, iTunes has this widget for selecting what type of media I want. I had it set to TV (never mind that my search turned up music and didn't suggest anything useful like "No results in TV. Maybe you want to try searching music?")
• OK, Music mode enabled. Ah, I see, There are options for "My Music", "Playlists", "For You", "New", "Radio", "Connect", "iTunes Store".
• Well let's try searching again, this time when I have the Music mode enabled. Hmm, the search results are again all for purchasing stuff. I know the context menu popped up and said I am searching the iTunes store, but how do I simply search for albums that I can stream from Apple Music? Wouldn't it make sense if the context allowed you to select between "My Music", "Store", "Apple Music (streaming)"? Oh well, ignore that for now, let's find Josh Homme's radio show. Maybe instead of searching, I'll browse to it. Okay, the top menu has an option for "Radio". So obviously Josh Homme's radio show will be listed under "Radio". *Click*
• Recently played, featured stations, Canadian, Blues, Classical, Rock. This isn't what I want. Where are the celebrity radio stations?
• Maybe I'll try search again. Maybe I missed it. Hmm, now when searching, the context menu has options for "My Library" and "Apple Music". That's different, I wonder what changed. Okay, now instead of finding albums, it listed something about Stations (which appear to be individual episodes, hence the name of the station being 'Ep 23...'), and it lists stuff about "The Alligator Hour with Josh Homme". Great. I can click a "Station" and hear the radio show. Still no clue how to find a list of other celebrity radio stations.
• I see....when I clicked "Radio", it set a different context, so now the search menu over there behaves differently. Now when I move my cursor half-way across the screen to the search menu and select it, it has a different context, based on the highlighted menu option back in the middle of the screen. This means the search box behaves differently depending on three different contextual menu selections from three separate parts of the application. Holy fata that is bad.

Other highlights:

• When I finally found the Josh Homme radio show, it never does call it "Radio". It seems he is flagged as a "Curator". But each episode of the show is listed under "Stations". But this must not be a radio station, since it cannot be found in the "Radio" menu. Wow.
• The "New" menu has a memory. Let's say I am under New, flip back to Radio, then back to New. Instead of reloading the main New menu that I saw the first time I navigated here, it loads up the last page I found while browsing under "New". If I hit "New" again (even though it is highlighted), it THEN navigates me back to the main "New" page. This is very counter-intuitive, and behaves unlike any well designed web page. iTunes may be framed in a desktop app, but a lot of this navigation uses web UI conventions, so I would expect everything to behave like the web.
• Okay, under New, looking to find a list of curators (like Josh Homme is labelled back on that other screen). Can't find him under Apple Editor Playlists or Curator Playlists. I give up.
• BTW, what is the difference between a "Radio" station and a playlist? The Radio stations are not a live stream. I can skip ahead on the Radio station just like it were a regular "Playlist".

I realize most of the UI problems can be overcome with familiarity, but it still sucks. Rant over.