As Promised, Apple Music Has Been Given a New Look and Feel
I really, really wanted to like Apple Music when it was released last year. But the interface was awful and my stupid fingers were too big to reliably hit certain parts of the UI. I found myself drifting back to Google Play Music and Spotify.
Apple realized there was a problem, so they set about redesigning things. The new-look Apple Music was unveiled yesterday at the company’s World Wide Developer Conference. So what did they do?
The Official Press Release Bumpf:
Apple Music has an all-new design, bringing greater clarity and simplicity to every aspect of the experience. It uses a new design language that allows the music to become the hero and a new structure that makes it easy to navigate and discover new music. The Library, For You, Browse and Radio tabs have been completely redesigned to provide an even greater sense of place, and we’ve added a Search tab to make finding music even easier. All of these changes come together to create a design that is clear and intuitive. iOS 10 features a redesigned News app with a new For You, organized into distinct sections that make it easier to find stories, support for breaking news notifications and paid subscriptions.
Apple has also added lyrics to the app’s music selections (when you scroll down from the top of the currently playing song), which was demonstrated on stage by Apple Music’s head of global marketing, Bozoma Saint John, using the song “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang.
Apple Music was supposed to be a streaming music titan, the Spotify killer the company needed. Instead it was just more or less Beats Music with a few different logos and a handful of tweaks. That was good enough for a beefy 15 million subscribers, but Spotify is still king of the music streaming hill. All that, however, is changing, as Apple is making a major bid for your eardrums.
Apple Music has ditched a lot of Beats’ look and style to look, well, to look more like Spotify, if the truth is to be told. The most Spotify-like features are mostly found in the new For You tab. Apple’s had some excellent curated playlists, and it’s expanding on that with a daily curated mix that’s more or less Discover Weekly from Spotify with the serial numbers sanded off. It’s also added lyrics to each song, which you can scroll down and read, and a nice, poppy, black and white color scheme that makes it look a bit like you’re reading an issue of Billboard. It also gets a Downloaded Music section, so anything local can be played back from that tab and users can send Apple Music in -ine links in Messages with the ability to play right from your texts.
Unlike the Music app introduced with iOS 8.4, the Library screen shows only the Recently Added content, requiring an extra tap to actually view your entire library. This of course means that you get to view a lot more Recently Added content right from the main screen, though.
The album page is pretty much the same in iOS 10 as it has been, but there are a few changes. For instance, the three dots that used to allow users to do things like add a song to the queue or share it are no longer there. Instead, this menu is accessed with 3D Touch on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus and by long-tapping on earlier devices. There are, however, three dots at the top that control the entire album. [Read more]
The all-new Apple Music will appear when the brand new iOS 10 Sierra is released in the fall. Meanwhile, you may wonder why Apple Music is so important to Apple. This article at Music Industry Blog explains everything.
