Creating a Music Playlist

Creating a Music Playlist

iFocus@Hadley

Creating a Music Playlist

Presented by

Douglas Walker

Recording

The Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired presents iFocus: Tips on Using the Vision Accessibility Features in iOS. In today’s installment we’ll look at creating a music playlist.

Douglas Walker

Hello, my name is Douglas Walker. Today we are going to be looking at how to create a new music playlist, and we will be using our iPhone for today’s demonstration. Now, if we aren’t quite familiar with exactly what a playlist is, well, we can kind of think of a playlist as maybe a folder that contains a list of all of our favorite songs, or even a list of all of our favorite artists, or even albums, if we like.

Now, once we have created our folder of favorite songs, we always have the ability to modify it at any time by adding or removing additional songs, if we like. Now, we can, of course, add songs and albums from our own music library. However, if we have signed up for an Apple Music subscription, we can then add from the over 30 million songs that are available in the Apple Music library. And I tell you, that really is pretty great.

All right. So how about we jump right in and take a look at exactly how to create a new music playlist. Of course, we will be using our Music app for creating and playing our playlists. And our Music app is right here on our desktop, so we’ll go ahead and we will just flick to it here. And we’ll just flick. All right, so here is our Music app. We’ll just single finger double-tap to open it. We’ll just single finger double-tap anywhere here. Great. Our Music app has opened for us and we have been placed on our Library heading at the top of our Library tab here.

Now, our Library tab actually includes any music that we might have purchased from iTunes. It’s also gonna include any other music that we have synced to our iDevice from our computer. And it will also include any playlists that we might have created. So this is where all of our personal music is stored within our Music app.

Now, as we said, we’ve been placed on our Library heading at the top of our Library tab here and this just so happens to be exactly where we want to be to access and to create a new music playlist. Okay, since we’re oriented to the top of our Library tab here, well, how about we just right flick to go ahead and check it all out here and we’re gonna discover exactly where we need to go to create our new playlist. So we’ll go ahead and just right flick from here. And we’ll right flick.

Okay, so here’s our Edit button in the top right-hand corner of our screen. And if we were to activate our Edit button here, we’d then be able to select from a list of possible categories that are gonna show up in our below list here. Now, we aren’t going to explore our Edit button. However, it’s good to know that we have the ability to completely customize the list that we’re just about to check out now. Before we right flick again, let’s just quickly discuss what we’re gonna encounter here.

Now, below we’re gonna find a list of ways in which we can access our music. And we have the ability to have our music presented to us by Playlists here, Artists, Albums, or even a list of all of our Songs that we have on our iDevice. So let’s just go ahead and right flick and we’ll check this all out. So we’ll just right flick now.

Great. So here’s our Playlists button and this is exactly what we’re looking for. Okay, so activating this Playlists button is gonna give us a button for creating our new playlist. We’ll also be presented with a list of all of the playlists that we have already created. So, hey, how about we do it? We’ll just single finger double-tap and we’ll activate our Playlists button here. So we’ll just double-tap.

Great. So our Playlists screen has opened for us and we’ve been placed on our library Back button in the top left corner of our screen here. Of course, we could just activate our library Back button if we wanted to move back to our library main screen. But we don’t want to do that because this is exactly where we want to be.

Okay, so we’ve been presented here with a list of all of our playlists and we also have our New Playlist button here, and so that’s pretty great. Let’s go ahead and just continue to just right flick through our screen here. So let’s right flick.

Great, so here is our Playlists heading, so we know for sure that we are in the right place. And, of course, our heading is usually right below our time in our status bar here. So let’s go ahead and we’ll just right flick. And we’ll right flick.

Okay. And we’ll let our hints play out there. But here is our New Playlist button, so, you know, how about we just single finger double-tap right here and we’ll begin our new playlist. So just single finger double-tap here.

Okay, so our New Playlist screen has opened and we’ve been placed on our Cancel button in the top left corner of our screen here. But we don’t want to cancel our new playlist here, so we’ll just right flick from here. And we’ll go ahead and just right flick.

Okay, so here’s our New Playlist heading. And, of course, again our heading is in the top center of our screen, so let’s go ahead and just right flick from here. And we’ll right flick.

All right. Here we have our Done button in the top right-hand corner of our screen. And, of course, we’ll come back and activate our Done button once we have actually finished creating our new playlist. So let’s go ahead and just right flick. And we’ll right flick.

Okay, so we’ve been placed right in our text field for naming our new playlist. This is great. So how about we go ahead and we’ll name our new playlist. Now, we’ll need to single finger double-tap, as we heard VoiceOver announce, to actually enter our Edit field here. So let’s go ahead and just single finger double-tap. And we’ll single finger double-tap.

Great. We’ve entered our text field and we’ve been given, now, a standard QWERTY keyboard at the bottom of our screen here. So how about we go ahead and we just type in the name of our new playlist. And we’re gonna name this playlist Hadley. Who would have thought it, right? Easy enough. Anyway, we’ll go ahead and just type Hadley in here. And we’ll type Hadley.

Okay, so we’ve typed in our Hadley title here. We’ll need to touch back up in our Title Edit field to continue, so we can just continue to right flick through our screen here. However, since we know we have a Done button in the top right-hand corner of our screen, how about we just touch there, and then we’ll continue to right flick from there, because it’s easier to orient our self to that Done button there. So we’ll just touch our Done button here. Okay, here’s our Done button, so we’ll just go ahead and right flick from here. And we’ll right flick.

Great. And so here’s our Title Edit field and we’re told that Hadley has now been entered. And, of course, this is exactly what we want, so we’ll go ahead and just right flick from here. And we’ll right flick.

Okay, so here’s our album artwork place holder. Now, we don’t yet have an image selected for our new playlist. However, the next button that we encounter is gonna give us the ability to do just that. So we’ll just right flick from here. And we’ll right flick.

All right. We heard VoiceOver announce Camera. Now, we actually aren’t gonna do this step today. However, if we were to double-tap and activate our Camera button here, we would be given a popup menu that would give us the ability to either choose an image from our photo library, or we’d be given the choice to actually take a photo on the spot with our iPhone’s camera, and that image could then serve as our playlist artwork. Now, this is something that we don’t necessarily have to do because as we begin selecting songs to add to our playlist, well, our artwork is gonna automatically be generated for us from the artwork of some of the songs that were added to our playlist. So let’s go ahead and just right flick from here. And we’ll go ahead and just right flick.

Okay. So here is a text field where we actually have the ability to add a descriptor for our playlist if we like. Now, this descriptor will actually help Apple Music subscribers to learn a little bit more about the types of music that we have in our playlist. Now that is if we decide to share our playlist with other Apple Music subscribers. Now, we’re not gonna do that today. We’ll just go ahead and we’ll just right flick from here. However, that is kind of a cool thing that we can do from here, but we’ll just right flick for now.

Okay. This is what we were just mentioning. If we were to toggle on our – single finger double-tap to toggle on our Public Playlist switch here, then our playlist would be shared with other Apple Music subscribers. That’s kind of cool, but we’re not gonna do that for now. So let’s just go ahead and just right flick from here. And we’ll right flick.

All right. Yeah, we’re finally here, right? We are ready to begin adding songs to our playlist. Now, to begin adding our songs, we’re just gonna single finger double-tap here and we’ll launch our Add Playlist screen here, or Add

Songs screen here. So we’ll just single finger double-tap.

Okay, our playlist screen has opened for us. And we’ve actually been placed on our Cancel button in the top left corner or our screen here. Now, we don’t want to cancel this playlist, so we’ll just right flick from here. And we’ll right flick.

Okay, so here’s our title at the top center of our screen here. So that’s pretty great. And we’ll just go ahead and just right flick from here. So we will just right flick.

Okay, so here is our Library heading. Now, our screen here is gonna appear exactly as our main library screen up here is for us. So this really should look kind of familiar to us if we’ve been using Apple Music. So we’ll just right flick from here. And we’ll right flick.

Okay, here we have another Done button. And, again, we’ll come back here to this top right-hand corner and we’ll activate our Done button once we have finished adding some music to our playlist here. So we’ll just right flick for now. And we’ll right flick.

Okay, so here we have a Your Library Edit field here, a search field, and this gives us the ability to search through all of our own personal music to add songs right from here, if we like. However, we’re just gonna choose from our Artists list today, so we’ll go ahead and just right flick. And we’ll right flick.

Great, so here’s our Library heading. Again, this screen’s gonna look exactly like our main library screen. So let’s just right flick from here. And we’ll right flick.

All right. Here’s our Playlists button. But we’re gonna add some artists to our playlist, so we’ll just right flick again. And we’ll right flick. Okay. And this is what we’ve been looking for. Here’s our Artists button. Now, if we were to activate our Artists button, well, all of the artists are gonna be listed for us in our music playlist here, or our music artists list, and we could choose songs from there to actually add to our playlist. And you know what? That’s exactly what we’re gonna do, so let’s go ahead and just single finger double-tap here. And we’ll just double-tap our screen anywhere.

Okay, so our Artists list has opened for us and we’ve been placed on our Back button up here in the top left-hand corner of our screen. Of course, we don’t want to go back, so how about we just right flick. And we’ll just right flick.

Okay. Here we find our Add Songs to Hadley button again, so we’ll just right flick from here. And we’ll right flick. And, of course, here we are in our heading so we know where we are. We’re in our Artists list. And, of course, this is at the top of our screen here. So we’ll just right flick again. And we’ll just right flick.

Here’s our Done button again up here in the top right-hand corner. And, you know, we’ll come back here once we have finished selecting our songs. So we’ll just right flick from here. We’ve seen that Done button seems to be everywhere for us, so we’ll just right flick again.

Okay, so here’s our A heading, and it’s kind of important to know that all of our artists are listed alphabetically by their first names. So how about we just right flick to our first artist here. So we’ll just right flick.

Great. So here we are on our first artist, and this is a great artist. Now, we could just single finger double-tap here if we like and this artist would be activated and we’d be presented with a list of all this artists albums. And like we said, this is a great artist, however, let’s just right flick a few more times and we’ll check out some of the other artists in our list here. So we’ll just go ahead and right flick. And we’ll right flick. Let’s right flick from here. We’ll right flick a couple more times. And a couple more times here. Let’s check Alison Krauss. Okay.

All right. Okay, now this really is a great compilation album here and, of course, we heard some of the artists listed that are in this album. So how about we add some music from this album here. So we’ll just go ahead and single finger double-tap and we’ll open up this artist here. So we’ll single finger double-tap.

Okay, so our album list, or list of albums has opened here and we’ve been placed on our Back button in the top left-hand corner of our screen. Now, of course, we only have one album here, so let’s go ahead and just right flick to our album here. And we’ll go ahead and just right flick.

And there’s our Artists heading there up in the top center of our screen here, and a bunch of names there. So we’ll just right flick from here. And we’ll right flick.

Okay, and here’s our Add Songs to Hadley heading again. You know, it’s kind of good that that’s there because it kind of helps sort of keep us on track, so let’s go ahead and just right flick from here. And we’ll right flick.