Want your music on the Mac separated from iTunes? Give Turntable a spin

If you longingly remember the heyday of digital albums, you’re the person for whom Turntable for Mac is made. It’s a “real album” app for macOS (10.13 and higher) and is available at the Mac App Store for $4.99. 

The software displays your music in grids of artists or, if you wish, nothing but albums displayed with their art. Tracks are displayed in a simpler utilitarian jukebox interface. Version 3.2 sports a new user interface, a new Visual Tracks view, and more.

Turntable is touted as the first desktop music player ever to present real albums as you have in a physical collection. And to an extent, that’s true. Albums and album art play full-screen and wide-screen on your Mac. However, Turntable doesn’t replace iTunes; it simply provides a new, colorful interface.

The interface is fun to use. It uses Albums as the main navigation medium. You can scroll through a matte collection of tiled album art. A slider lets you adjust the size of the tiles. If you have a 27-inch iMac, you may want ’em big. If you’re on a 13-inch MacBook Air, you’ll probably prefer smaller icons.

The secondTurntable option is browsing by Artist. Choose this option and a list of all the artists appears with their discography (well, the ones you’ve purchased on iTunes) appearing with their names.

Turntable is fun to use but has limitations. There are no liner notes or lyrics like in an album from back in the day. The display of your music by Album or Artist seems haphazard. It’s not in alphabetical order, nor could I find any method of arranging it this way. 

Turntable doesn’t play particularly nice with playlists in iTunes. That’s not surprising as playlists are comprised of a collection of album cuts and singles you’ve purchased. 

And, as you might expect, you can’t access Apple Music from Turntable nor the Movies, TV Shows, and Podcast categories in iTunes.

Is the app for you? If you want the full iTunes experience, no. If you’re one of those who think that Apple should break iTunes on the Mac into Music, TV, and iTunes Store components as it has in iOS, you’ll certainly want to give it a look.