Apple Music Redefined: Latest News, Updates And What New To Expect

First Posted: Sep 07, 2016 04:44 AM EDT
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Apple is scheduled to unveil the highly anticipated iPhone 7 today but ahead of the big launch the company's one-year-old music streaming venture, "Apple Music" is already getting a refresh. Apple Music now makes use of carousels in many places to navigate shows, stations, and playlists, resulting in app pages that are shorter and more interactive.

Apple Music subscribers who are beta-testing the company's new mobile and desktop operating systems: iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, have begun to see personalized playlists appear on the platform.Apple has stripped out the visual clutter that it threw at users the first time around, and now presents the most important things more prominently.

What's New?

In the iOS 10 of Apple Music, a new feature called "My New Music Mix" is found in the "For You" section of the Music app, and currently offers 25 tracks selected based on your listening history, reports Quartz. The idea here is to expose Apple Music subscribers to more of the sort of songs and artists you would like, based on those you like to play that is effectively the same concept as Spotify's "Discover Weekly." There are also Artist Spotlight Playlists, New Releases For You, and posts from Connect.

The app's New section now goes by the more accurate name Browse, and it's less scatterbrained. Alongside "My New Music Mix," Apple Music subscribers on iOS 10 are also seeing the addition of another playlist called "My Favorites Mix," which updates every Wednesday. This one includes both songs you love "and more," says Apple, in its description.

The seemingly endless page is now gone, now there's just a carousel of a few selections, and then links to a few pages you can dive into only if you want: New Music, Curated Playlists, Videos, Top Charts, and Genres. The vaguely titled My Music section has been wisely renamed Library.You can add and remove categories of content from your Library. And the art for your recently added albums is bigger now.

In the Radio section, Connect is hidden at the bottom, below On Demand, Playlists, and a short About biography. The Follow button for Connect has been dropped inside the ellipses menu.

What hasn't changed?

According to Venture Beat, Beats 1 DJs like Skrillex, Deadmau5, and DJ Khaled, and anchor Ebro Darden, are still the GemsOnce you've listened to Beats 1's shows for even a few hours, it becomes obvious why Apple is spending money to bring on more music artists and secure more exclusive albums.

Apple Music has been gaining momentum, picking up more and more paying users - more than 15 million as of June. I expect that people who open the app for the first time and see this revamped version will be more likely to stick around than those who took a look at the initial iteration.

To further differentiate itself, Apple Music is slashing its price. Shared through an Apple Insider report, Apple is selling 12-month subscriptions to the music streaming platform for $99 via gift cards, bringing the monthly cost down from $9.99 to $8.25.That makes the service cheaper than Spotify-though the latter is pushing out new features of its own.

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