Apple Music subscribers can now transfer their playlists to Google's YouTube Music service free of charge.

According to a new support document, users can log in with their Apple Account to a Data and Privacy page, where a new 'Transfer a copy of my Data' option allows users to move playlists from Apple Music to YouTube Music. However, Apple has made it clear that only playlists will be transferred, not the actual music tracks. This limitation is likely due to rights agreements that Apple and Google have with record companies. In addition, Google is also offering a tool to transfer playlists on YouTube Music back to Apple Music if you feel like you've made a mistake.

At present, there are no options to transfer playlists from Apple Music to other music services, such as Spotify and TIDAL. For now, YouTube Music is the only choice. Nevertheless, it's a handy feature for those who have been using YouTube's music service instead of Apple Music and want to save time by transferring a bunch of playlists over.

How to switch

Transferring your Apple Music playlists to YouTube is a simple affair. All you need to do is the following:

• Go to Apple's Data and Privacy page, then sign in to your Apple ID account.
• Select 'Transfer a copy of your data'.
• Follow the onscreen instructions to complete your transfer request. To start the transfer, you’ll need to sign in to your YouTube Music account.
• If done correctly, you'll receive a confirmation email from Apple, and your playlists will appear in YouTube Music in the Library tab.

And voila! All of your playlists will now appear on YouTube Music. You'll have to re-download the songs for offline play, remember. YouTube Music will try to match up any songs that are on its service, but if there's a track in a playlist that's not there but is available on Apple Music, it won't be included.

Once the transfer is complete, you'll be able to browse and edit your playlists in no time.

However, it's important to mention again that, if you want to go back to Apple Music with your playlists (mostly) intact, Google offers its own tool to do just that.

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Right now, you can get three months of Apple Music for free. It's all thanks to an extended trial offer that new subscribers can take advantage of.

Apple Music is the largest paid music streaming service in the United States and second only to Spotify worldwide. Besides your favorite albums and music, Apple Music is also a showcase for music videos, 24/7 radio stations, and much more.

With more than 100 million songs and streaming being completely ad-free, Apple Music is a great way to both listen to the music that you love and find new music that you aren't already familiar with. The service is available across multiple platforms, including the best iPhones and best iPads, Apple Watch, Apple TV 4K (2021) and older versions, HomePod, Mac, CarPlay, Windows, Android, Chrome OS, Amazon Echo, and through the web.

How to get three months of Apple Music for free

To qualify for this extended trial period, you must be a new subscriber to Apple Music. If you have previously subscribed to Apple Music (including through an Apple One plan) or had access to the service through a Family plan, you will not be eligible for this trial.

For those who qualify, getting started is as simple as opening the Apple Music app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, signing in with your Apple ID, and accepting the offer. If it doesn’t pop up straight away, just head over to the Home tab and you’ll find it waiting there. After your trial has ended, you'll begin paying the regular monthly price for the music subscription. You can, of course, cancel.

The service is regularly priced at $9.99 per month or $99 per year. Students pay $4.99 per month. A family membership is $14.99 per month. When you sign up for an Apple Music Family plan, which supports simultaneous listening for up to six devices or accounts

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In 2021, Spotify announced that there would be a new option coming to its streaming platform — Spotify HiFi. The idea? To bring hi-res streaming to Spotify and its users, rather than the lower quality streaming that we’d been lumping it with for years prior.

Cut now to three years into the future, and three whole other streaming services introducing hi-res streaming (and actually following through), and Spotify still won’t give us a proper date for the release of its higher-quality streaming service. The firm’s CEO has spoken about the release, and apparently it's still coming — although, as always, there’s no news about when.

Vaporware

Vaporware

Noun

Software or hardware that has been advertised but is not yet available to buy, either because it is only a concept or because it is still being written or designed.

That’s the definition of vaporware that Google gives, and Spotify HiFi is starting to feel like it fits the bill pretty well. It was announced, it’s sat around as a kind of vague idea for a while, and other companies have since beaten it to the punch. Like Apple’s AirPower, id Software’s Commander Keen: The Universe Is Toast!, and Half-Life 2: Episode 3, Spotify HiFi feels more and more like something that’s never going to arrive. You’ll even find it on Wikipedia’s list of vaporware, to really hammer it all home.

Whether it will see the light of day like some Vaporware remains to be seen, but for now, it remains in app purgatory, probably being rung through on a rack in a hieronymus bosch painting. But there’s more to it than that — and why it remains vaporware, and not just a feature that could have been.

Spotify keeps talking about it as if it's something that we can still expect. Most recently, the CEO has stated on the company's earnings call that it’s on the way, and given us more of an idea of what it’s going to look like. He says that it’s going to come with more control, whatever that means, and it’s going to cost you “something like $5 above the premium tier.” That puts the new tier at around $18, and potentially even more than that if ‘something like’ ends up being greater than $5. That would make it the single most expensive music streaming service around — more than Apple Music’s $9.99 per month, more than Tidals $9.99 per month, more even than Qobuz.

So.

At what point should Spotify simply… not?

There are so many more options out there

We’ve established that Spotify will be more expensive than every other service out there, but why should you move to them instead? Beyond, you know. The savings. And the fulfilled promise of hi-res streaming. Better apps, more control over offline music, comprehensive online FLAC stores… 

Honestly, though, Apple Music is all that most people are ever going to need. Top-quality streaming, a massive library, Apple Music classical, and human-curated playlists all add together for a great experience. It’s going to cost you less, and if you’re an iPhone user, it comes preinstalled on your device.

Spotify’s HiFi tier might never be coming — but there are loads of options out there that won’t cost the world. And, you know. Actually exist.

Apple Music Classical has been out for a while now and has been a bit hit for anyone with an Apple Music subscription and a passion for classical music. The standalone music app organizes classical music and offers a more targeted search much better than the regular Apple Music app.

While you can find your music much easier with the Apple Music Classical app, what if you want to follow the most popular classical music out right now? That's where a top charts playlist comes into play and, up until today, the world didn't really have such a thing. Apple is looking to change that.

In a press release, the company announced the Classical Top 100, the world's first global Top 100 weekly chart for classical music. Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and Beats, said “Apple Music Classical has been a huge hit with classical fans around the world. With the launch of Apple Classical Top 100 and the recently announced new partnerships, the app is transforming the world of classical.”

Get ready for some hot tracks

The first number-one album on the Apple Classical Top 100 album is Bach: Keyboard Concertos with Chinese pianist Tianqi Du and the Academy of St Martins in the Fields conducted by Jonathan Bloxham. In a statement, Du said “I’m deeply honored for my latest album to be top of the first Apple Classical 100 chart. These concertos are a vibrant showcase of Bach’s energy and spirit, bursting with emotional richness and expressive depth. I am sincerely grateful for the fantastic platform Apple Music Classical provides, helping us musicians connect with classical music lovers globally.”

You can check out the Classical Top 100 chart playlist on Apple Music Classical here. If you haven't downloaded the Apple Music Classical app yet, you can grab it from the App Store. 

You will need a subscription to Apple Music to get access to the music in the app. Apple Music currently costs $10.99 per month for an individual, $5.99 per month for a student, and $16.99 per month for a family. It's also part of every tier of Apple One, the company's subscription bundle service.

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Apple has announced that it has added four new Apple Music Classical partners to its growing collection, bringing more music from famous venues, opera companies, and orchestras to the service.

In a press release provided to iMore, Apple confirmed that the four new partners will join the existing 35 with Aspen Music Festival, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the Verbier Festival now part of the mix.

The move means that Apple Music Classical fans can look forward to exclusive playlists related to the new partners' programming within a dedicated space within Apple Music.

(More) music to your ears

Existing Apple Music Classical’s partners include Berlin Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, Opéra national de Paris, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Seoul Arts Center, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Suntory Hall, and the Vienna Philharmonic.

As for the new content that classical music fans can expect, Apple says that "the Aspen Music Festival, celebrating its 75th anniversary season this year, will present curated playlists of its artists alongside exclusive recordings from the Festival." The Hong Kong Philharmonic also provides "three exclusive spatial audio remasters of Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony conducted by Vasily Petrenko, and Respighi’s Pines of Rome and Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony both conducted by Lio Kuokman."

The partnership with Verbier Festival also brings new and exclusive commentary from Mischa Maisky about his latest release on VF Gold and more.

Apple Music Classical is available to all Apple Music subscribers at no extra cost and is available via its own dedicated app, available from the App Store.

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Whether you're a Spotify or Apple Music user, I wager there's a chance you like to keep an eye on what the other side of the fence is working on in their quest for music streaming service dominance.

While I'm firmly in the green camp for now, when Apple's Senior Vice President of Services, Eddy Cue, opens up on the rivalry, it's worth listening to what he has to say.

Cue took to popular tech YouTube channel SuperSaf to talk about the differences, and similarities, between the two services. You can check it out below.

Eddy Cue on Apple Music vs Spotify

"Everyone pretty much has all the same songs so there are not any differences there," Cue admits, "But that doesn’t mean you can’t innovate and that you can’t do special things. That’s the mistake that people think."

"If you look over the last few years, we’ve innovated in quality of the music. In the history of music, there’s really been two formats, mono and stereo. Now, with our surround sound, it’s the first time that you put on a set of AirPods and you’re moving your head and the music is like you’re sitting on the stage with the band exactly how they were hearing it when they’re singing it."

One of the reasons I've stuck with Spotify is the company's willingness to try new things with curation around AI, but Cue seems to be focused on the human side of streaming music.

"We still think there’s a people part here, as much as we love technology. There’s still an aspect of people that’s critical to us," he explains, "That starts with radio, where we do live radio shows with real DJs and the playlists we’re creating that are algorithmic but always with a personal touch to it."

Cue also acknowledged Apple's shortcomings with classical music, noting that the company "knew we sucked" at handling classical music.

"One of the things that we knew we sucked at doing was classical inside of Apple Music," he admitted. "So we decided like if you love classical we should give you the same kind of experiences, so we went off and did a completely different application for Apple Classical."

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Tesla has supported a number of music streaming services directly through its operating system for a while and, in addition to Spotify which basically is available everywhere, Apple Music is one of them. However, Apple is about to get some more competition in Tesla vehicles.

With just Apple Music and Spotify being the big music streaming services in the most popular EV, I'm sure that helped boost subscribers in some fashion. However, today's software update reported by Electrek is bringing both YouTube Music and Amazon Music apps into the Tesla operating system, so Apple (and Spotify) are about to get some healthy competition.

How can you use YouTube and Amazon Music in your Tesla?

In its release notes for the software update, Tesla has confirmed that it is bringing native support for YouTube Music to its operating system. The company said "Listen to over 100 million songs with YouTube Music Premium. Access your Library to see all of your liked and added songs, playlists you created and artists and podcasts you subscribed to."

It has also revealed that it is bringing native support for Amazon Music to Tesla vehicles as well, saying "Prime members get access to over 100 million songs in shuffle mode, All-Access playlists, plus the largest catalog of top ad-free podcasts. Upgrade to Amazon Music Unlimited for full, on-demand access."

If you want to stream either service directly through your Tesla, you will need to either be connected to Wi-Fi or pay for Tesla's Premium Connectivity service. That's the subscription that costs $10 per month and lets you stream music, video, and anything else that requires connectivity.

For everyone who has been subscribed to YouTube Music and Amazon Music and had to stream to their Tesla through Bluetooth, today is a great day. Of course, if your car supports CarPlay, you don't have to worry about any of this drama.

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After raising its prices a few weeks ago, Spotify has revealed a new plan for users - but it comes at the cost of one big feature.

The company will offer a new "Basic" premium plan which includes everything you'll find in a standard premium plan except for access to audiobooks. It'll set you back $10.99 per month, a small discount on the $11.99 subscription price of the 'Individual' premium membership.

A Family version of the new Basic plan will cost $16.99 per month, offering up to six Basic accounts without audiobooks. The Premium family plan is still $19.99 a month.

You can sign up on Spotify's site.

Spotify matches Apple Music pricing

The new Basic subscription tier brings Spotify to the same price as Apple Music's standard price, but the long-rumored Spotify Hi-Fi could be just around the corner.

The new higher-tier option is expected to add around $5 per individual membership, making it around the same price as a family membership of the new Basic tier.

The company has also been keen to push AI features for users. I wrote last year about how impressive the AI DJ was, while it began rolling out a Chatbot-style AI playlists feature in April.

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Family Sharing on your Apple devices is a very useful feature, as long as it works. The feature allows you to share your Apple subscriptions with other family members that use an iPhone, iPad, or any other Apple product.

Once added to Family Sharing, everyone can use Apple Arcade, Apple TV Plus, share iCloud storage, and lots more.

In this guide, we'll look at using Family Sharing with Apple Music which can often not work as expected. With this in mind, we've rounded up the best troubleshooting recommendations to fix your plight with getting Family Sharing working with your Apple Music account.

What you'll need

If you want to use Family Sharing with Apple Music you'll need access to an Apple device. There are so many to choose from but we've selected the best iPhone alongside our favorite iPad and Mac at the moment. So if you're looking to start using Family Sharing with Apple Music or looking for a new device, here are our picks:

Fixing Family Sharing on Apple Music

Below, we've got four solutions that could help fix your issues with enabling Family Sharing on Apple Music.

Make sure the family member's device is using the same Apple Music account

Family Sharing requires the devices of other family members to be logged in to their individual Apple IDs. For example, if you're the head of the household, your family member's iPhone or iPad needs to be logged into their account, not yours.

Some users may share Apple Music accounts for purchased content — but to get Family Sharing to work, every account on the family member's device must be linked to that family member's account. You can't have a different Apple ID for Apple Music on the same device.

Log out and in again

Straight to the point — have a family member switch off their Apple Music account by going to Settings > Apple Music, then remove them from the Family Sharing screen if they're there.

You can do this by going to Settings > iCloud > Family Sharing.

Have them enable Apple Music, and once it's back on their device, try to add them back into Family Sharing.

Remove then re-add everyone from your Family account 

The apocalyptic option, but it can work — simply remove everyone from your Family Sharing settings. Have all of them delete the Music app on iPhone and iPad, and also have them log out of their Apple ID accounts.

Once this is all done, do the opposite — log back in with their Apple ID accounts on their devices, enable Apple Music, then add them back into Family Sharing.

 Chat with Apple Music Support

If you've tried everything and nothing's working still, talk to Apple. Hopefully someone in the team can help walk you through problems with your account and go from there.

One more thing... the reward is when it all works

It's only in the past couple of years that I've begun to see the true potential of Family Sharing. It's an impressive feature, especially for students who may want to share an Apple Music subscription.

My wife and I share some services — such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, and PlayStation Plus, so Family Sharing was the natural step for us, as we only own iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches.

I have, however, come across some issues in adding a couple of Apple's services to this — random errors would appear, simply refusing me to allow my wife to use Apple Music.

After she signed out of her Apple ID and signed back in, everything worked, and, four months later, everything is still working great.

If you're thinking of setting it up, don't worry about potential issues that may crop up — the above solutions will be able to help you out if needed.

If you spend any amount of time browsing music sites, like me, then you’ve undoubtedly seen roughly six hundred and thirty-seven thousand, one hundred and twenty-six different ‘best’ lists that try to tell you who the best guitarist of all time is. Sometimes, you agree with the list — after all, they put Steve Vai at the top, and who could disagree with that? Not me, he’s my favorite guitarist you know, he wrote ‘For the Love of God’, one of the greatest instrumental guitar pieces ever put to tape, and he…

Sometimes, though, you don’t agree with the top pick. Why would they pick Kirk Hammet? I mean, yeah, he’s good, but best of all time? Nah, couldn’t be, best he did was the solo on ‘The Shortest Straw’ and everyone knows that doesn’t even get close to someone like Randy Rhoads and his work with Ozzy…

Apple, apparently trying to become the arbiters of ‘the best music that you should listen to’ has stomped into the scene, not just picking the best albums in a particular genre of music, but the 100 best of all time. That should mean albums spanning all the way from the 20s to right now (although Apple’s timeline seems to start around 1965, so there are around 40 years of big band, soul, and jazz missing somewhere along the line), and just as you’d expect from something that claims to gather up all the best music of the 20th and 21st centuries people aren’t happy with the results — particularly Apple’s top pick.

I mean, it’s good, but…

You can sum up most of the world’s feelings (apart from, perhaps, the overly opinionated on Twitter) to any list with “I mean, yeah, it’s good, but surely X is better?”. These are entirely opinion-based lists, and as with any opinion, there are going to be those that disagree. The top pick for Apple’s list is the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Hill’s only solo album to ever hit shelves.

There’s no one that can definitively say that Hill’s album is bad. It broke new ground, it was an angry woman writing angry music about being angry at the world around her, lashing out at injustice and everything that makes the world difficult to live in — in an industry that still would rather its female artists were pop music vehicles rather than politicized individuals. It was however Hill's one solo work of brilliance — Hill has as yet never released a complete follow-up — from an artist that managed to destroy most goodwill toward her over the course of a very troubled career. 

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill may have gone down as one of the best albums of all time (whether you like it or not, Twitter) but whether Lauryn Hill's legacy will be that of her music or troubled personal life, only time will tell. Recognition of this album, thankfully, for the moment at least, will out shadow any criticism beyond her music.

But Tammy. You cry. Why is this important to Apple’s list? It’s important because while Hill has become a sort of cultural pariah, loved by some and pitied by others, her album still deserves recognition for the effect that it’s had on music as a whole — but as the best album of all time? The jury is very much out on that one. Most importantly, however, you know what likely wouldn’t choose Hill's debut as the best album of all time? A computer. 

The internet lists that you might find on Rolling Stone or NME are fun because they get people talking for a little bit, and then fade into internet obscurity. People rant at each other for a minute as to whether Paul McCartney was a better songwriter than Noel Gallagher, and then they forget about it. Apple’s list isn’t even the first list that has been created by a streaming platform; there are plenty out there on the likes of Spotify.

The Apple list, however, is something different. It’s not just designed to create conversation, but to show that Apple has a human curation element that other streamers lack. The list feels like a bunch of like-minded people got together with an enormous pile of records to discuss which of them is the best of all time. Crucially, it wasn’t just an algorithm that read through a list of streaming stats, which would have popped the most streamed album at the top of the list. The latter doesn’t show you the best, it just shows you what people like.

While there are plenty of people who completely disagree with Apple’s selection, the top pick makes the list feel more human. I don’t agree with Zane Lowe and the rest of the crew about that top pick, but I appreciate that they’ve taken the time to discuss it, and then editorialize it on the Apple Music page. The whole thing is an interesting project. Is it worth getting all het up about it like some particularly voracious fans are on Twitter? No.

But surely part of the fun is working out why you don’t agree with the list at hand and going off to make your own.

Spotify has a new… font?

Look ma, it’s not in court! (Well, it is, but we’re not talking about that right now. For once.) Spotify, evidently bored with the font that its app has been using for the last few years, has decided to completely redesign one from the ground up. Spotify says, “To design this typeface, we broke free from traditional typographic constraints and merged elements from a variety of font styles. This approach mirrors the dynamic and evolving nature of audio culture over the years.”

Quite. It’s supposed to be, apparently, a ‘remix’ of traditional fonts, adding some together for a new one that looks like… a font. It’s going to roll out today on the apps on both desktop and mobile, so you’ll get to experience Spotify Mix, the firm tells us, starting today.

New features could be coming to Apple Music

Where is the first place we usually hear about Apple Music features? That’s right, it’s in the ever-boring back-end code of iOS! Before Apple has a chance to announce any of them at the upcoming WWDC 2024, eagle-eyed code nerds are sorting through all the numbers and letters that make Apple Music work to see what's coming next for the streamer.

While I couldn’t give a monkey’s foot what the code looks like, I am excited by what the code nerds have found hiding away in an iOS 18 leak. There’s apparently going to be better song transitions, for one, which will smooth out those gaps between songs. Does Apple Music have a massive problem with this at the moment? Not that I can detect, although there are more transition options on the likes of Spotify, and it looks like the update will bring similar cross-fade options for playlists and radio stations.

The second new feature is one called ‘Passthrough’, and it's more nebulous in its purpose. There is some conjecture that it is a rebranding of Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos — although given the ubiquity of the two names, that seems unlikely. What the new feature actually does remains a mystery.

What to watch

X-Men '97

When I was a kid, waking up early in the morning to watch infinite reruns of the X-men’s various animated adventures was always a highlight of the day. Waiting for my Dad to drive to work, and then filling the time between my Mum waking up with a few episodes was exciting — and Wolverine just made it even more so.

The X-Men '97 show isn’t a reboot. It’s a continuation, and there’s a lot you’re not going to understand if you didn’t watch the old nineties animated show. As a new season of an old show, however, it's spectacular. The animation, while cleaner, smooth, and modern, still looks like the old show. The best way to put it is that ‘it’s how you remember the old one’, even if you could instantly tell them apart if you were to put them side by side.

It’s grown up with its audience as well, bringing the themes of the original 90s show in line with the age of most of the people watching it now. It’s not afraid to be more violent, point out more extreme cases of injustice, and deal with more harrowing themes. It’s now finished, and you can go and watch it on Disney Plus on your Apple TV.

What to listen to

Apple’s 100 Best Albums

Listen to the list that has the internet talking — you might not agree with what’s on it, but you can discover why each album is on the list thanks to the Apple mini-site. There are undeniably some absolute bangers on here, so sit down, get comfy, and get listening. 

Over the last few days, Apple has been releasing albums it says rank in the top 100 recordings of all time — now, it's finally released the top 10, and what comes at number one feels like something of a curveball.

But before number one, there are numbers 10 through two that Apple, Nile Rodgers, and Maggie Rogers (no relation to me, of course) have chosen.

Apple's final 10

Coming in at number 10 there's Beyonce's Lemonade, from 2016. "Every second of Lemonade deserves to be studied and celebrated," Apple tells us, as Zane Lowe adds "It was the first time I feel that an artist of that magnitude, with that much attention on them, decided to take the narrative and really try to control it and share what they wanted to share."

Number nine comes as no surprise — Nirvana's Nevermind. The grunge classic is the top-performing rock album on the list and brings some dirt to the top 10. "When this album came out, it made everyone who heard it and connected to it feel like we finally had a band, a real band that was ours," Lowe says of the album — we feel you, Zane.

Number eight? That goes to Amy Winehouse's classic Back to Black, giving some much-needed soul to the final ten. "Right from the beginning, I felt like her voice was delivered to us from another time," Ebro Darden says, echoed when Rogers says that Amy "took all that tradition and then added something to it and moved it forward."

Kendrick Lamars good kid, m.A.A.d city takes the number seven spot, for the rap showing on the list. Lamar's brand of poetic rap resonates with Dobro who says that "He delivered on a Black consciousness that you don’t always get in hip-hop. And that’s why I’m really proud of the fact that it ranks where it does on this list."

Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder is up next. Taking the number six spot, the rich and engaging entry struck a chord with Rodgers. "or me, no matter what instrument he’s playing, he sort of speaks with the same voice. It’s a real unique gift" he says. "I can’t imagine a world that doesn’t have this record in it." Us neither, Maggie, us neither.

Number five on the list is Frank Ocean's Blonde. "It is music put on canvas." says Lowe, continuing that "I see strokes of color I never saw before or even knew existed. There’s so many layers and thoughts and emotions and hooks and ideas."

Coming in at number four is none other than Prince himself, with Purple Rain, the soundtrack that was leagues better than the movie it accompanied. Dobro loves Prince's hands-on approach: "He actually writes the song. He’s actually singing on stage. He’s actually doing his own art direction. He did his own fashion design. That was all him."

We're getting close to that top spot now — number three is The Beatles and Abbey Road. There's that famous crossing, and McCartney's bare feet, the base for roughly one million rumors around his supposed death. "There’s something about the Beatles that’s always really magical to me. Believe it or not, the first song I ever actually learned to play on guitar was a Beatles song," Rodgers says. A sentiment we can all follow, if you've ever picked up a guitar you've almost certainly tried the riff from Come Together.

Number two — almost there! This time it's Michael Jackson's hit album Thriller, with the best Halloween-themed track ever put to tape. "When Michael dropped this record, to me, the world changed. It was a seismic shift. Having a Black artist do a music video on the level of “Thriller” just changed the world," says Rodgers — no disagreements from us.

What about number one?

And finally, number one on the list — and it's one we weren't expecting. Apple and its judging panel have decided that The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn Hill is the best album of all time. "This album doesn’t just resonate with the people who were around when it came out and who hold it dear," Says Lowe. "You hear people; you hear the voices talking… It’s so open and so expansive and so direct… To have an artist like Lauryn Hill be the number one, that means a lot," says Maggie Rogers, showing how important Lauryn's voice is.

So those are Apple's top 100 albums of all time — what do you think? We're reserving judgment for when we've managed to get our heads in order over the whole thing, although it's likely that the top ten is going to divisive in opinion. But isn't that just part of the fun?

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With exclusive tracks, lossless audio, and Dolby Atmos, Apple Music is already an impressive subscription service — and a recent report claims it is about to get even better. 

As reported by Apple Insider, according to “People familiar with Apple’s pre-release operating systems”, Apple will be announcing a whole host of new Apple Music features when it unveils iOS18 next month at WWDC 2024. 

Firstly, this report claims the crossfade function is about to get much better. Where, before, picking two songs would make the first one fade out as the second fades in, you can now set the number of seconds for each song in the transition, and can adjust the sound to make both songs the same volume. If you are someone who likes to make playlists based on certain vibes and genres, this new smart transition function will help your playlist sound even better. 

What else is new?

Apple Insider also reports that “The Music app will also introduce support for a feature dubbed "Passthrough," which will only be available on supported hardware.” Though we don’t know which hardware will support it just yet, the post above reckons it could be Apple rebranding Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos to simply “Passthrough.” This will be a feature granted to anyone with an Apple device, regardless of whether they have an Apple Music subscription or not. 

Finally, Apple is reported to be working on better audio for gaming. The report claims that Apple is working on a “hands-free audio control for gaming” and is also investing in “Spatial Gaming”, which is seemingly different from the spatial games we have seen on Apple Vision Pro. 

This is all expected to be announced at Apple’s conference at WWDC on June 10, where the company is predicted to give more details on iOS 18, iPadOS 18, visionOS 2, and watchOS 11.

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• Everyone should try Apple Music. But should you subscribe?

To show how much stuff it managed to fit into the brand-new and unbelievably slim iPad Pro M4, Apple managed to create an ad that lit the internet on fire. 

The ad, dubbed ‘Crush!’ was a part of Apple’s Let Loose launch event, and saw all kinds of creative tools like instruments, art materials, and books getting mashed by an enormous hydraulic press.

Ever since the ad appeared on Twitter, it’s ignited a storm of messages from users outraged over the destruction of the tools, with complaints ranging from waste and recycling to Japanese creatives angered due to a wonderful ancient belief that physical objects have souls, making their destruction tantamount to blasphemy.

Apple, seeing what it likely thought was an innocent attempt to show how compact and feature-filled the iPad Pro is and, perhaps contrary to intent, how it managed to become a catalyst that brings every creative on Twitter together to decry the reaches of technology into their space, has issued an apology over the ad.

A misjudged attempt that riled up creatives everywhere

To atone for its sins, Apple has bowed its head and said ‘We’re sorry’. In a statement to AdAge that we saw through NBC News, Apple is clear that it intended not to cause any kind of offense, harm, or blasphemy to its watchers (and, in turn, most of its target audience in creative professionals).

“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”

In addition to the apology, Apple is also pulling the ad from its TV spots, so you’ll never have to see a rubber emoji’s eyes popping out of its stretchy face. It’s interesting, however, to think about the environment in which Apple has launched the ad, and how even just a couple of years ago it might not have created such a stir.

Imagine, instead, that Apple launched the ad five years ago, when the world saw tech as something that would enhance the creative experience. iPads could be drawing tools, Macs could be music creation aids, iPhones could help you record your ideas on the go — the future, as both Apple and creatives saw it together, was bright for a tech-creator symbiosis. Had this ad been released then, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as badly as received.

Take, for example, the LG ad that is now circulating again thanks to Twitter. It similarly uses a giant crusher to crush creative tools into a device, albeit this time with a focus on cameras and photography. The phone at the heart of the ad, the LG Renoir KC910, is a so-called camera phone with an 8MP shooter on the back, then some of the best optics attached to a smartphone. Yet the device at the heart of the advert isn’t the most important part that we need to focus on here — rather, the context into which it released, and why it didn’t receive backlash at the time.

Search through the comments on YouTube or for any articles about the ad when it came out is fruitless. Nobody cared. What was different then that’s now around to make an ad like this cause so much backlash? For one, the relationship between tech and creativity is becoming more and more strained thanks to generative AI, and what many see as a way for big companies looking to save money, and skip over creative professionals who already find it difficult to find work.

Combine that with a general distaste for content created for AI art and music, and you’ve got a bubbling pot of negative feelings toward anything that could resemble tech overtaking creativity. Enter, then, just as tensions are at their highest, Apple’s ad that crushes artistic endeavor into its thinnest and lightest iPad yet. While Apple likely didn’t intend to, it seems to have sent a message to concerned creatives feeling the weight of budget cuts and unscrupulous managers turning to alternative methods of content creation. A message that says ‘an iPad can replace all these beautiful things into one’ rather than ‘we’ve squeezed loads of stuff into the slimmest Apple device ever’.

It wasn’t the cause of the way that people are feeling about the state of the creative industries, but the brief 30-second video became a catalyst for artists to get their thoughts and feelings known. It embodies everything that they are worried about coming real — a physical manifestation of all the things that they’re scared of.

Apple likely didn’t think this would be the case, the intent seems different to the outcome. But the moment you release something to the world, you are no longer the sole owner of the meaning of what you’ve created. You can’t stop the way that people react to something that you create, and in this case, that has backfired merrily on Apple and its ad.

Was the reaction over the top? Perhaps, but there is a very real, tangible anger from those complaining about the ad that’s impossible to ignore. As Apple heads into its AI future, it has to think long and hard about how it introduces its generative products to its audience of creatives who’ve long used its products to help them make music, art, and movies — it may have apologized, but trust is lost in but a moment.

Spotify’s continued quest to pay artists less

Spotify hasn’t been shy from the news recently, with its ongoing legal battle with Apple still very much lodged in the headlines. Well, while it’s using one hand to fence off Apple’s app store team so that it can get a link to its subscription options into its app for the best iPhones, it’s using the other to restructure its commissioning rates for artists — and the latter party isn’t too happy about it.

According to Billboard, Spotify has started to reclassify its deal with artists and creators on the app. Only last year there was a shift in revenue that saw massive numbers of artists now receive nothing for their artistic endeavors — and this new restructuring seems to be even worse. Somehow.

Now that Spotify has added audiobooks to its premium subscription, the streamer now argues that there are more licensing costs to pay per subscription — in essence, that it now has more things to pay with your $9.99 per month. Who else should shoulder this extra cost, Spotify thought, than its bread and butter, the reason it's able to exist?

To save money, Spotify will now pay artists a “discounted “bundle” rate”, and “reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.” The idea is that it will combine royalties from its three subscription options, paying artists less overall. To show how much artists will be losing out over this restructuring, Billboard did some maths in the article above and ended up with a total of $150 million lost for artists on Spotify. Ouch.

To make matters worse, Spotify doesn’t seem to need to save money — the company is growing, according to Spotify user stats. What it does now risk, however, in annoying its artists, is users and creators moving to alternative streaming platforms with better royalty rates that don’t cost the end user more to use.

There are rumblings that Spotify is going to up the cost of its premium subscriptions to $10.99 a month, bringing it directly into firing range of the likes of Apple Music, the recently reduced TiDal, and Amazon Music. Where these services all cost a dollar or so more than the green circle at the moment, another raise in Spotify’s cost would make for convincing price parity between all the options. Would a mass exodus of artists make the audiobook addition worth it? Only time will tell, but Spotify’s profiteering might become its undoing.

Apple just made Apple Music even better for labels and distributors

Apple already has an excellent way for artists to view metrics of their music and its streaming, but the firm just launched a new way for their teams to view trends and more with its called ‘Apple Music Partner Program’. This gives labels and distributors ways to view different, so-called ‘premium metrics’, allowing users to track artists' milestones with tools like ‘Chart Explorer’.

The news comes via Music Business Worldwide, which goes into more detail about the new program, which came to Apple Music on May 9th. For the front-end user, it’s not going to mean much, but for artists and their teams, it's going to be a useful way to see how their music is doing as they release it to the world.

Apple apologizes, And Spotify makes things worse

While the two companies battle it out in the App Store, Apple and Spotify have their own issues that make life difficult. Apple’s apology was the admonition of guilt, an understanding perhaps of not what it did wrong, but rather that it wasn’t expecting quite so much backlash to its advert. It points to a potential pain point in its upcoming AI releases, and highlights how careful it's going to have to be — and even more careful now that it's already trodden on the proverbial cat's tail.

Meanwhile, Spotify risks completely alienating its artists with more weird decisions around its commissions and royalties. There’s a kind of tightrope that streamers have to walk when it comes to the artists on its platform, and it seems like Spotify might be getting slightly too cocky and trying a backflip before it’s managed to stabilize itself properly. And before you even think about adding more cost to the subscription, lads, there’s something missing that everyone has already added in — where’s our HiFi streaming option?

Either way, it’s another week of Apple and Spotify news. Hopefully, there’s something new in the mix next time, because if I have to think about the various missteps of the most popular streamer on earth, I’ll book a plane to Sweden and mash some heads into desks myself.

What to watch

Dark Matter

Given that it's a mystery TV show where writing too much about it would give too much away we’ll instead give you the Apple TV+ blurb of the show so that you can make up your mind if it is something that tickles your TV glands:

"Jason Dessen is abducted into an alternative version of his life. To get back to this true family, he embarks on a harrowing journey to save them from the most terrifying foe imaginable: Himself."

Staring Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly, and Alice Braga, you can watch the first two episodes of Dark Matter on Apple TV+ now. First impressions from someone who’s seen those two first episodes (that’s me!) are of a well-crafted, tense thriller that has some excellent action and a tantalizing mystery. Edgerton does an excellent job as main character Joel, and his joint lead Connelly is, as always, special to watch. One for fans of hard Sci-Fi this one.

Shogun

No, it’s not on Apple TV+, but you can still watch it on your Apple TV with the Disney Plus app. The Samurai epic is now finished, and what a ride. With twists and turns a plenty, it's easily one of the best TV shows of the last ten years, featuring an incredible story and some excellent characters.

In 1600, an English pilot and navigator ends up washed up in Feudal Japan. He quickly becomes a part of the plans of local Lord Yoshii Toranaga, who desires for power and influence in a Japan without a Shogun. Based on the book of the same name by James Clavell (which is also excellent), Shogun is a tale of backstabbing politics, Samurai honor (or lack thereof), and the influence of foreign powers who think they have more control in distant lands than they actually do.

The leads are incredible, and while Cosmo Jarvis’ English accent while playing the main character Blackthorne might seem over the top, you quickly get used to it. The most praise goes to Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai, however, who play Lord Toranaga and Japanese interpreter Toda Mariko respectively.

Toranaga is threatening yet benevolent, never revealing too much of his plan — and Sanada is terrifying in the role. Mariko is reserved yet powerful, and Sawai is almost certainly one of the best parts of the whole show. Boot up Disney Plus and give it a whirl the next time you sit down to watch something on your Apple TV — it is excellent. The whole thing is available to stream now.

What to listen to

You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To — Knocked Loose

Bringing a righteous fury and a massively manageable 27-minute runtime, the latest 10-track album from the Kentuckian hardcore crew brings the breakdowns. Thick, heavy, and absolutely furious, You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To is a triumphant return to form with some brilliant features from Poppy and Chris Motionless. About as subtle as a brick to the face as always, but loads and loads of fun. See you in the pit!

Radical Optimism — Dua Lipa

Pop diva Dua Lipa is back, fresh with some more disco-inspired beats on her latest album. Thick, driving string basslines drive a deliciously smooth time that doesn’t stray too far from what came before but builds on what was already a solid base in Future Nostalgia. Engaging, fun, sultry pop music from one of pop's most accomplished artists.

Eurovision 2024 Playlist

IT’S TIIIIIIIME! The Eurovision Song Contest which features nations that are nowhere near the European continent is almost upon us, and the official playlist is available before the show for us to listen to on Apple Music. There are all kinds of genres on offer here, from bizarre comedy industrial metal to some Eurobeat, and even some artists you might recognize.

If you're a teen walking around the United States you're probably reading this on your iPhone. You're likely wearing an Apple Watch as well, but the chances are good that you aren't all that much of a fan of Apple's streaming services — whether that's Apple Music or Apple TV Plus.

That's according to a new survey that took a look at how teenagers feel about various things in their lives, including what technology they like to use. As is often the case, Apple came out of the survey pretty well with teens seemingly in love with their iPhones and Apple Watches. But where Apple's hardware rules the roost, it isn't such positive news when teens talk about Apple's services.

Instead, where Apple would like Apple Music and Apple TV Plus to be more prominent, it seems that Spotify, YouTube, and Netflix are much preferred.

iPhone and Apple Watch are clear winners

This is all according to the Piper Sandler "Taking Stock with Teens Survey" which is shared twice annually and is designed to get a feel for how teens are finding lives and what they're using to navigate the world. As always, Apple found itself prominently mentioned — although not always in a positive light as reported by Apple World.

Starting with the good news, iPhone ownership among teens is at a record high of 85% according to the survey. The news is only bettered by the 86% figure found when teens were asked if they intended to buy a new iPhone in the next six months.

It was a similar story when the Apple Watch was mentioned, with 34% of teens already owning Apple's wearable. Notably, there was an increase in the number of teens who said that they intended to buy a new model within the next half-year as well. The figure now sits at 13% which is notably more than the 10% that claimed the same thing in the fall of 2023.

As for its services, 55% of respondents said that they prefer to use Spotify while 35% pointed to Apple Music as their choice of music streamer. In terms of people actually paying for their music, only 30% said they paid for Apple Music.

There was more positive news around Apple Pay, however. 57% of those surveyed said that they had used it while 44% said they had bought something using Apple's contactless payment system within the last month.

Unfortunately, that's where the good news ended. When it comes to watching content, YouTube and Netflix dominated while Apple TV Plus ranked right at the bottom of the pile with a single percentage point to call its own.

Those looking for a silver lining will note that weekly VR headset usage increased to 13% from just 10% last time out, something that could potentially suggest that Apple may be on to something with the Apple Vision Pro. However, we can probably safely assume that the VR headsets teens are using are more likely to be of the Meta or PlayStation variety rather than Apple's $3,499 high-end behemoth. Still, the suggestion that teens are ever more comfortable wearing a headset of any kind suggests there are sales to be made in the coming decade and beyond.

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While Apple attempts to get its ducks in a row, so to speak, and inject some additional AI features into iOS 18 and beyond, Spotify has stolen a march on its rival with a new AI playlist feature.

"We just launched a new beta test - AI playlists," Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek said on X (formerly Twitter).

"It’s a feature that uses AI chat prompts to help you curate personalized playlists. It’s still a work in progress but I’m excited for you to give it a try."

As shown in the accompanying gif, users can ask Spotify via a chatbot-style prompter for a custom playlist. The example given in Ek's post is "Give me a playlist that will make me feel like a main character".

The update is rolling out for Premium subscribers in the UK and Australia for now, although at the time of writing, I'm not able to see the option on my phone.

Apple Music and AI

Apple Music's recommendations do a decent job of curating tracks for your library, but it's one of the areas where Apple's foray into AI is expected to be leveraged for increased personalization.

Spotify has already been doing something similar with its AI DJ. It's not a chatbot, but offers a synthesized voice to recommend an array of tracks based on what you've been enjoying recently or further back.

It's the chatbot-style interactions that help this new format stand out, and given Apple is reportedly working hard on its own large language model, seems like it could be a battleground where the next generation of music curation is fought.

As for Spotify, users may see a price hike in the coming days if reports are correct. The streaming service has been pushing to make podcasts and audiobooks profitable in the long term.

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Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor has some choice words about the streaming landscape and how it's affecting smaller artists. 

Given that Reznor was previously an Apple Music executive, having been part of the Beats Music team that Apple would eventually consume, his words hit truer and sharper than most — especially when he says that "the terrible payout of streaming services has mortally wounded a whole tier of artists that make being an artist unsustainable."

That's not all he had to say about the state of the streaming landscape during a wide-ranging interview with GQ, and it's likely that his ex-colleagues at Apple Music might not be too happy reading it.

Trent goes in with teeth

“It’s great if you’re Drake, and it’s not great if you’re Grizzly Bear”, Reznor states, illustrating the core of the issue — big artists are able to do well from streaming, while young, upcoming artists struggle more with finding an audience and getting paid for their music.

“Those boats rise. These boats don’t,” he says, taking the argument further. "They can't make money in any means" Reznor continues, lamenting the difficulty of making music through streaming.

He thought that Apple Music could be better, with “influence to pay in a more significant way”, giving artists more for their work. He then goes on to admit that a lot of it is restricted by label politics, with “everyone trying to hold on to their little piece of the pie.” As much as he might have wanted Apple to make a difference, it wasn't as easy as he'd hoped, with a multitude of different pockets to keep topped up with small amounts of revenue.

Most sadly, Reznor recognizes that it’s on the listener as well. They don’t care how much an artist is paid (for the most part), and they “just want to turn the faucet on and have music come in.” There’s little concern for “all the romantic shit I thought mattered.”

To Trent Reznor, music streaming has been a failed experiment for artists — but given that there are some very, very rich people making money out of it and customers getting an extremely convenient service, it’s unlikely to go anywhere soon.

According to Producer Hive, Apple is only second to Tidal when it comes to streaming royalties, giving some credence to the idea that Apple wants to make things better for artists. That still amounts to just a fraction of a dollar per stream though ($0.0008 to be exact), so even if you stream your songs a couple of thousand times, that's only just a dollar. Trent Reznor has enjoyed a long and storied musical career — and he seems to want the same for up-and-coming artists. Unfortunately, even when played on those platforms that pay the most, that's becoming less and less possible.

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The battle between Apple Music and Spotify continues, and there's even a battle between Apple as a whole and the Swedish music streamer thanks to the ongoing EU Digital Markets Act shenanigans as well. But it's the music that really matters, and Spotify has taken a step closer to offering feature parity with Apple in one key way — support for music videos.

While Apple Music has offered music fans the chance to watch the videos that go along with their favorite songs for years, Spotify has lagged behind somewhat. That's changing as of today, with Spotify announcing that it is rolling music video support out to a total of 11 countries as part of a beta experience that will likely improve considerably in the future. The list of 11 countries includes plenty that you might expect including Spotify's home country of Sweden, but there's one notable exception that will no doubt be corrected in due course.

At the time of writing Spotify is launching music video support in the U.K., Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Colombia, Philippines, Indonesia, and Kenya. The most obvious omission there is the United States, and while some might make the link to Apple's home turf, that's surely little more than a coincidence. In fact, Spotify says that there's actual science behind its decision to roll the new feature out in Kenya, but not the US.

Let the beat go on ... in some countries

In a press release detailing the new beta feature, Spotify simply listed the countries that are coming online. But in a deeper dive with TechCrunch, Spotify’s VP Global Head of Consumer Experience Sten Garmark explained that the company " chose these markets based on a number of criteria including market size and the availability of local content support." The VP went on to add that users should "stay tuned as we hope to expand the catalog of music videos and increase availability to more countries.”

Being in one of those 11 countries isn't the only limitation here, either. Spotify says that you'll need to be a Spotify Premium subscriber to enjoy the new music video feature with the price of that subscription varying depending on what part of the world you happen to live in, whether you're a student, and if you want multiple people to be able to use the streaming service on the same account.

Beyond the country and payment limitations, there is also no guarantee that your favorite songs will have videos available anyway. The press release notes that the feature is rolling out "with a limited catalog of music videos, including hits from global artists like Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat, and Ice Spice, or local favorites like Aluna and Asake."

You'll know whether the song you're listening to has a video available because there will be a button that offers users the chance to "Switch to Video" if that's the case. The video then starts from the beginning of the song. The option to switch back to an audio-only version of the song will also be available, too. Turning the iPhone into portrait orientation will allow the video to fill the screen, too.

Spotify says that the new music video feature is available on iOS and macOS as well as TV devices, not to mention Android phones and other desktop apps.

The feature appears to work well currently, but the only question many reading this will have is currently impossible to answer — when will Spotify music videos launch in the US?

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Apple Music users on Android who’ve dug around and gained root access have woken up to a shock — The Apple Music app doesn’t work anymore. 

AssembleDebug noticed the access restriction and posted it to X with some screenshots to show what’s happening.

Instead of their music libraries and millions of tracks to listen to, rooted users will just get an error message that reads “Only Available on Unrooted Devices Apple Music is no longer available on rooted devices”. No more tunes from the Apple Music app for you, lest ye unroot your device, or find a workaround.

Rooting? What’s that?

Remember jailbreaking? When you bypass some of the security features of an iPhone to gain access to more of the phone's software? That’s what root access does, only on an Android phone. It lets you remove apps that the manufacturer of your device has installed in the factory, change or even delete system files, and in some cases, install a different version of Android.

Rooting is not for the faint of heart — it can open you up to more security threats, for example — but it's a popular way to gain more control over how your device acts. That also means that Apple’s new Apple Music ban on rooted phones has already been broken down and worked around.

Our mates at Android Central point out that there are a couple of ways to bypass Apple’s new ban, such as MagiskHide and something called SafetyNet Fix, which hide the rooted status of your device.

But why?

Apple is just another in a lengthening line of developers 4disallowing access to certain apps and features from rooted devices. For example, Android Central also says that Google apparently has stopped rooted devices from sending RCS messages, as a way of avoiding spam.

There are a number of reasons why Apple could have done the same as Google, and restricted rooted users' access to its platform. It could be the security risks that come with rooting an Android device, or just Apple’s continued need for control over the kind of devices that its software is installed onto. It’s not clear as yet, but it could show a growing trend that might concern rooted device users.

Not us, though. We iPhone users are safe to use Apple Music.

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Tidal just devoured Apple and Spotify’s breakfast and ran away with the cereal box — it’s cut the price of its top-level HiFi tier in half, making it the same price as both of those other options.

That not only makes it a better option than Spotify with more features for a similar price, but it also brings its superior FLAC file formats and HiRes library to trounce Apple Music.

Apple Music beware

Tidal has traditionally not been cheap. The top-level HiFi Plus tier (which I pay for) was $20.99, almost double the cost of an Apple Music subscription. For the price, however, you got some of the best sound quality in the business, an excellent selection of music, and some exemplary audiophile features like external DAC settings.

Now, Tidal has combined two of its subscription tiers — the aforementioned HiFi Plus tier and its HiFi tier — into one, bringing the price down along the way. That new price will net you all of the features of the more expensive plan, including HiRes FLAC and Dolby Atmos playback. There is also Tidal’s DJ extension, allowing the mixing of the 110 million HiRes tracks available in Tidal’s library, although you’ll have to pay an extra $9 per month for that.

Where does this leave Apple Music? This new plan is the same price as Apple Music's streaming plan and provides notably better sound quality. Apple Music boasts fewer tracks as well, surprisingly, with Apple only noting ‘100 million songs’, of which not all are Lossless. Tidal's increased sound quality and support for a wider range of Spatial Audio equipment might convince more people to switch now that the price is better as well. The only way to save a bit more on Apple Music is to pick it up as part of the Apple One bundle, which is a good deal more expensive but includes iCloud, Apple News Plus, Apple TV Plus, and more at a discounted rate compared to purchasing them individually. 

As for Spotify, while it’s got that same 100 million track count as Apple Music, it also has its extensive podcast and now audiobook library. If you’re after HiRes streaming, however, then Tidal is the way to go — Spotify is still yet to offer any kind of high fidelity option. 

For people like me, who’ve dutifully paid that $20.99 a month for the last few years, this is a welcome change and saving on what was a very expensive music streaming service. For those ready to switch, now could well be the moment that you’ve been waiting for.

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The Apple Music streaming service has a lot going for it, especially if you spend most of your time inside the Apple ecosystem. Whether it's the first-party Music apps on the iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, and other platforms, or just the vertical integration that only Apple can offer, using Apple Music has its benefits over using something like Spotify or Tidal. Apple is even working to make it easier to switch music streaming services in an effort to get more people into Apple Music, too.

One of the features that Spotify users have often pointed to when saying they prefer the streamer over Apple's alternative is Spotify Wrapped — a feature that gives music fans information on which songs they've been listening to most plus a whole lot more. Apple Music's Replay is an attempt to compete with that, and while some would argue it comes up short, others are very much fans of it. But the problem with Apple Music Replay is that it only arrives once a year. Or at least, it used to.

That's now changed with Apple debuting a new monthly version of its Replay offering, one that brings all of the same information to music fans across the globe so that they can see just which earworm they can't quite quit. Or in the case of those with children, which song their little ones have listened to so much that they've managed to destroy the suggestion algorithm. We've all been there. We've all seen the damage that Baby Shark can wreak.

Monthly music

Those who want to take the new monthly Replay experience for a spin can find it at replay.music.apple.com so long as they log in with their Apple ID. Do that, and information like the most-listened-to songs will spring forth while monthly listening time and more are all available for perusal. Those who like to share such things can, with the option to send such stats to friends and family offered up.

There's one slight catch worth noting, however. TechCrunch notes that Apple is keen to say that only users who “listen to enough music” will get monthly stats — but it hasn't yet been forthcoming as to how much music they must listen to. If you're someone who dips in and out to listen to the same song over and over you probably won't get much out of Apple Music's Replay feature anyway, but it sounds like you'll just have to give the monthly situation a miss completely, unfortunately.

Alongside the new monthly Replay Apple Music is now offering up the Replay Mix playlist for 2024 and subscribers can find that in the Apple Music app.

Those who have yet to subscribe to Apple Music can take advantage of a free trial. After that, a student subscription costs $5.99 per month while a standard sub runs for $10.99. A family subscription costs $16.99, while Apple Music is also available as part of the Apple One subscription bundle. That's arguably the better option, especially if you're already paying for other Apple services like Apple TV Plus, iCloud storage, and Apple Fitness Plus.

An individual Apple One subscription costs $19.95 per month while a Family subscription costs $25.95 per month. Those who want to get the most value can choose the Premier tier, adding more storage and additional services for $37.95 per month with family sharing enabled for up to five other people.

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• How to sign up for Apple Music on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac

If you've ever switched from one music streaming service to another you're likely all too aware of the absolute farce that can ensue. Losing access to all of your meticulously created playlists is a real pain and if you have a huge library of music recreating that on another streaming service can often take so much time that few of us actually ever bother. Some people even refuse to switch because of the work that would be required and Apple seems to be well aware of that fact.

Getting people to switch to Apple Music from competing music streaming services like Spotify and Tidal is something that Apple has been trying to do for years now, and while it's still a popular offering it can't compete with the biggest and the best. But for those who do want to switch, Apple now seems determined to make it as quick and easy as possible to that effect it's reportedly now working on a tool to make the move less of a pain.

According to a new report Apple is working with SongShift to create a new feature that will allow people to take the music library from a competitor's service and move it to Apple Music. The feature is being tested, but it isn't ready to go just yet. However, it now appears clear that work is underway to make switching to Apple Music easier.

Moving all the things

According to a new MacRumors report Apple is testing the feature currently and references were found in the latest Apple Music beta for Android. They were first spied by a Reddit user but have since been confirmed by the site after diving into the app's APK.

Notably, the feature appears to be part of a deal with SongShift, a third-party service that already allows people to move their music playlists and libraries between different music streaming services. References to the feature being "powered by SongShift" can be seen on screenshots alongside text that invites users to "Choose a service and transfer your library and playlists you made over to Apple Music."

There have long been options for people who want to go this route but they have been third-party versions and limited in some way. They often also cost money or in some instances require a subscription. That obviously wouldn't be the case with any Apple-backed alternative.

It isn't yet clear how long Apple Music switchers will have to wait for Apple to bring this feature to the masses, but it's surely one that Apple will want to offer as soon as possible. Not all of those testing the Apple Music beta app on Android are already seeing the feature as an option, suggesting that Apple is still very much in the testing phase and is trying to ensure a limited number of people put the switching tool through its paces.

Apple Music is currently available with a free one-month trial while six months of music streaming is also offered when people buy certain Apple hardware, too. Beyond the trial music fans pay $5.99 per month for a student account or $10.99 per month for a standard account. Families can pay $16.99 per month while Apple Music is also available via the Apple One subscription bundle, too. That's perhaps the better option because it includes subscriptions to Apple TV Plus, Apple Fitness Plus, and more.

More from iMore

• Apple Music: Everything you need to know about Apple's streaming service
• How to sign up for Apple Music on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac
• How to watch music videos in Apple Music

"Kanye West" and "trouble" seem to go hand in hand it seems in recent years, whether he's saying massively controversial things, promoting horrible ideals, or supporting some of the worst people on earth. Now, however, he's in trouble for different reasons — and it led to his new album, Vultures 1, being removed from Apple Music for a short time.

Distributor issues for the worlds most controversial rapper

On February 15, Billboard reported that Kanye's album had been removed from Apple Music, updating the article a few hours later to say that the album had been brought back online.

The initial removal seemed to comply with a request from Kanye's music distribution platform of choice, Fuga Music. Fuga said of the issue to Billboard "Late last year, FUGA was presented with the opportunity to release Vultures 1." The spokesperson for the platform went on to say "Exercising our judgment in the ordinary course of business, we declined to do so.”

Kanye didn't listen, apparently, and used the platform's "automated release processes" to release the album to different streaming sites, making Fuga less than pleased. “On Friday, Feb. 9, 2024, a long-standing FUGA client delivered the album Vultures 1 through the platform’s automated processes, violating our service agreement. Therefore, FUGA is actively working with its DSP partners and the client to remove Vultures 1 from our systems.” said Fuga further — and not a few days later was Vultures 1 removed from Apple Music.

It's not entirely obvious how Vultures 1 has since returned to Apple's streaming platform — one can only assume that the distribution issues have been ironed out. That, or it was a technical glitch that has since been fixed. Either way, those curious can listen to the latest project from the mind of a self-confessed 'madman'. Vultures 1 is available to Apple Music customers and iTunes buyers now.

More from iMore

• Apple Music: Everything you need to know about Apple's streaming platform
• How to watch music videos in Apple Music
• Apple Music or Spotify — which is better?

Only a few days ago, Apple released its new mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro. While all the other virtual reality or augmented reality headset manufacturers have stuck with the VR or AR moniker with which to describe their devices, Apple however has instead made its own name for what it presumably sees as the next era of computing — spatial computing. Computing in space! Or something…?

Apple doesn’t want the Vision Pro to be a gaming headset like its competitors. Instead, Vision Pro is positioned to one day replace your PC, today acting as a working companion to your expensive and powerful MacBook Pro or Mac Studio, as well as being a very high-tech media player. As a computer replacement in a world where people use their primary computer as a method of consuming various types of content, Vision Pro needs to be good at watching movies, playing games, and more — and do it in such a way that stands out from the rest of the portable computing space.

Apple hopes that what sets Vision Pro apart is ‘spatial’ everything.

Spatial video, Spatial Audio, and spatial photography are all built into Apple's latest innovative device — although that does mean that Apple has tossed all its eggs in one basket. If no one is interested in all things spatial then Vision Pro, and by extension, Apple, have a problem 

To make sure that spatial ‘things’ become the ‘next big thing, period’, Apple has put a significant amount of money into making sure that content exists for the headset. That means Spatial Audio tracks that don’t cost Apple Music users any extra subscription fees, and 3D movies in Apple TV+. To get the ball rolling, Apple has already gotten started on making the new ‘spatial’ version of ‘things’ more likely to happen. There’s Apple Original Pictures for one, with its aim to bring exclusive movies and TV shows to Apple devices, and then a boost to Spatial Audio royalties for artists that record and master their music in Spatial Audio. A good start, one might have thought.

Unfortunately, not everything seems to be going to plan.

Spatial Audio royalties go pop

If Apple wants Spatial Audio to really take off, the first thing it needs is loads of Spatial Audio tracks to be available on its streaming platform. While we don’t have the exact number of tracks that are available with Apple Music, we do have some interesting stats from Apple itself. According to the Cupertino giant, there are only 10% of users who are yet to listen to a Spatial Audio mixed track, and the amount of tracks mixed in Spatial Audio has increased 5,000% since the format joined Apple Music. Even more interestingly, Spatial Audio accounted for 4/5s of the music that landed in the platforms Global Daily Top 100 over the last 12 months — which is certainly impressive.

It remains hard to find precisely just how many albums have the Spatial Audio surround sound mix attached, but it's by no means the entire Apple library. Finding anything mixed in the format is harder than it needs to be, and even new music being added to the platform won’t necessarily have the Dolby Atmos accreditation.

To make the Spatial library larger, Apple increased royalties for artists and labels adding Spatial Audio music to the platform. That would be an extra 10% for tracks added in the format — a not insignificant percentage that Apple hoped would encourage engagement with surround sound. Unfortunately, there’s a catch that many artists and labels aren’t too happy about.

That extra 10% isn’t really added on, instead coming from a fixed pot of available revenue for streaming, according to a Financial Times report. That means that money for normal streams of music that aren’t Spatial Audio accredited could go down, costing the label and the artist revenue in the process. For those who are confused by this seemingly-fixed payment structure, you are not alone — we reached out to some of the affected labels for clarification, but at the time of writing none were prepared to discuss the details of the deals they have in place with Apple.

However confusing, the fact remains that it hasn’t encouraged artists and labels to pick up the format — after all, to record and master a Spatial Audio track you have to add on an extra $1,000 in production costs per piece. For some labels that could add up to tens of thousands of dollars per artist, making updating their library too costly — but also leaving them with lower revenue as non-spatial tracks are left in the cold. Some labels are now looking at fixing the problem with Apple, or taking their business elsewhere should discussions falter or fail. That, obviously, would be catastrophic.

It’s not a good start to the Spatial era, particularly as the Vision Pro headset has gone all-in on Spatial Audio. The apparently excellent but leaky speakers strapped to the side of the headset will pump out Spatial Audio from Apple Music, as will the USB-C version of the AirPods Pro 2 that can be paired with Vision Pro.

Want Spatial Audio in Vision Pro?

Then you’re stuck with those two above options — although it seems like that’s for good reason. Apple is only allowing ‘hi-res’ Spatial Audio with Vision Pro, something that the AirPods Pro 2 (with USB-C — sorry Lightning-model owners) are exclusively capable of. Same goes for those weird head-mounted speakers that will let everyone in the room/plane cabin/jacuzzi know that you’re listening to something embarrassing. 

Want to try out Spatial Audio with a pair of otherwise-spatially-compatible AirPods 3 or AirPods Max? No luck there I’m afraid, time for a new pair, you pauper.

Some directors are all in on spatial movies, though

What won’t make Apple worried (or at least as worried) is that all the directors that see spatial movies in Vision Pro are apparently ‘blown away.’ James Cameron, the visionary director behind the likes of Titanic, Aliens, and most recently Avatar: The Way of Water seems to be pretty excited about Vision Pro and the movie experience that the headset can provide.

“I would say my experience was religious,” Cameron told Vanity Fair, giving us some idea as to the calibre of director that’s had a chance to play with Vision Pro. Jon Favreau, creator of Chef and The Mandalorian (and never the twain shall meet) said that he was “excited by what kind of story I can tell now that I couldn’t tell before now” — and he’s the guy that brought dinosaurs to Vision Pro through Dinosaur Encounters on the App Store and Prehistoric Planet on Apple TV+. He’s made sure that those of us with dreams of being eaten by a T-Rex are well fed (or at least as well fed as the T-Rex would be when he’s got me in his jaws. I’m very fatty, so I’m likely more delicious than filling, though.)

Apple at the Oscars

Apple has already had some success with its Original Films business, coming away with awards for movies like CODA at the Oscars. Even more recently, Apple has had loads of Oscar nominations for its latest movie projects, with Killers of the Flower Moon (a Martin Scorsese opus) and Napoleon (from one Ridley Scott, Gladiator man) both receiving nominations — including Best Picture for the former.

Both of those movies will be coming to Apple TV+, with enhanced immersion thanks to the extra pizazz that the headset adds in the form of a kind of virtual cinema. Will this make more people likely to buy an Apple Vision Pro? Only time will tell, and I’m not sure that spatial movies, video, or even hi-res Spatial Audio are going to be what really pushes potential customers over the ‘should I really spend as much as a secondhand car on a mixed reality headset?’ threshold.

Apple’s Spatial speculation

Apple is almost putting all its eggs in one basket with the Vision Pro. While it has thriving lines of laptops, phones, and tablets, it looks like the firm thinks that this is the future of computing. Personally, I can’t think of something much worse than wearing an aluminum and glass headset that weighs as much as an iPad on my face for anything longer than half an hour, but I am but one grumpy tech writer.

Apple certainly seems to be putting in the work to make sure that Vision Pro has plenty of content for some time to come — but is it really enough?

What to watch

Apple is going to the Oscars once again — and you should probably check out the two films that its awards hopes rest on. First and foremost is the movie up for best picture: Killers of the Flower Moon. The Martin Scorsese flick is an epic western drama that tells the story of the murders of the Osage Native American people in 1920s Oklahoma. It's based on a book by David Grann and real history — and it does an excellent job of not only sticking pretty rigidly to the actual story but also being a harrowing and realistic portrayal of the US's relationship with its indigenous population.

Lily Gladstone, who plays the main character Mollie Kyle, is up for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and Scorsese is up for Best Director. It's loaded to the top with incredible talent, including Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Brendan Fraser. Make no mistake — it's a lot to take in and emotionally draining, but it's an excellent picture and one to watch.

Napoleon, Apple's other Oscar-nominated film, is one that's slightly more divisive. It tells the story of the legendary French Emperor and General, Napoleon Bonaparte, and director Ridley Scott managed to rustle some feathers with movie critics, the French, and historians in one two-and-a-half-hour streak. 

There's no denying that Scott's film is an epic affair — the battles look incredible, with some truly enormous set pieces hammering home the scale of the fighting. There's a standout performance from Vanessa Kirby who plays Napoleon's long-suffering wife, Josephine, arresting your attention every time she's on-screen with a kind of mischievous joy and underlying cunning.

Joaquin Phoenix's Napoleon himself leaves a lot to be desired, however — beyond his weird, sniveling on-screen persona, it feels like Phoenix is only putting in three-quarters of the effort necessary. History fans aren't going to be massive fans of the inaccuracies either, especially as they watch a cannonball take a massive chunk out of the pyramids of Giza. For those after an epic historical romp that will make you laugh (whether it means to or not), however, will have a good time watching Napoleon mope about his manor houses and have various battles with other rulers of the time.

What to listen to

Looking for something to listen to in the run-up to the Super Bowl? Usher's going to be playing the Apple Music-sponsored halftime show, and Apple Music listeners can tune into his "My Road to Halftime" playlist to dust up on one of the biggest R&B artists in the world.

There are some of Usher's most well-known tracks in the playlist, including U Don't Have To Call, U Got it Bad, and My Boo. There's more here than just the greatest hits of Usher — there's a whole bunch of his biggest influences as well, like Alicia Keys' No One, and Frank Sinatra's Classic My Way. It follows Usher as he prepares for what is often one of the biggest music moments in the entertainment world, preparing himself for something that might become the most important show of his career.

The playlist is available now, just before Usher releases his ninth album, COMING HOME. If you want to learn more about the man behind the name then there's also going to be an editorial feature on Apple Music called 'The Story of Usher in 20 Songs', "giving an in-depth look at the 30-year career of a generational artist and performer" Apple tells us.

It’s been said that when the Welsh actor Richard Burton, the Shakespearean actor who some say was the greatest actor of his generation, read from a telephone book, he could make such mundane material sound like “Hamlet.” That’s how great his acting and performance skills were.

I don’t believe Tim Cook, the Apple CEO and now, apparently, part-time actor, hails from the same school of acting as Burton. 

But if you’re interested in seeing Cook’s dramatic and comedic skills in action, so to speak, you can see him in two teasers for this year's Super Bowl Halftime show, one a very short YouTube teaser and another longer Super Bowl teaser, which includes the first at the start, that runs more than seven minutes.

The halftime show is sponsored by Apple Music and will feature acclaimed R&B and pop music star, Usher, who, in both videos, is missing in Vegas. Ludacris, along with rapper Lil Jon and actress Taraji P. Henson, are out to find him. 

Two wacky “Where is Usher” teasers for upcoming Super Bowl LVIII

Cook's emotionless acting chops are great at the start of the videos, vaguely recalling Sheldon Cooper from “The Big Bang Theory." But it's hard not to also love Ludacris, when he apologizes to the well-known executive, saying, "Tim, I'm sorry bro! Usher's gone!"

The longer, seven-minute clip continues the madness and mayhem, as Ludacris, Lil Jon and Henson try to find Usher. This longer clip features more celebrities, too: In addition to Ludacris, Lil Jon and Henson, there are appearances by actor Wesley Snipes (posing as his cousin), musicians J Balvin, .Paak, and Anderson, and magician Criss Angel. And if the clip wasn't wacky and surreal enough, there are a couple of appearances by Blue Man Group. 

Super Bowl LVIII and Usher's halftime show are scheduled for this Sunday, February 11th.

Apple has finally launched its TV and Music apps for Windows 10 and above.

In October 2022, Microsoft announced that Apple Music and Apple TV would come to Windows as beta apps. Over a year later, these apps have officially launched, with the same look and features as their Mac counterparts. The iCloud for Windows app has also been redesigned and renamed as Apple Devices — so you can manage your devices connected to a PC, as well as iCloud photos between an iPhone or iPad to a Windows PC.

iTunes arrived on Windows XP back in 2003, letting users browse and buy music from Apple’s iTunes store, while enabling its third-generation iPod to work with Microsoft’s operating system. Apple has decided to leave iTunes available as a separate download if you want to listen to your subscribed podcasts, but otherwise, there’ll be no need to use the app anymore.

With the iPod and now iTunes put out to pasture, managing your music on Windows with Apple’s iconic app has come to an end after 20 years. You can now download Apple Music and Apple TV from the Microsoft Store.

The end of an era, the start of a new one? — iMore’s take

After 20 years, iTunes is being left by the wayside so that Apple Music and Apple TV can both take the app’s place on Windows instead — and good riddance. Before iTunes on the Mac was retired in 2019, the app felt bloated, slow, and annoying to use as you would get lost in its user interface.

Apple Music and Apple TV are great apps on Windows — they’re far simpler to use compared to iTunes, mainly because of what they offer. Apple Music is for listening to music, and Apple TV is for watching content. The apps do what they say on the tin — it’s a straightforward affair.

If you’re someone who prefers to use a Windows PC instead of a Mac, Apple now has you covered (if you’re a subscriber to these two apps). If you save an album on your iPhone in Apple Music, that will now sync to your PC through the new Apple Music app. This finally helps users manage their music without having to deal with the bloat of iTunes.

Granted, it took a while for these apps to be brought out of beta, but it’s great that they’re here — and if you’re planning on watching Severance Season 2 on a Windows laptop later this year, the new Apple TV app will finally let you do that, whenever you want.

More from iMore

• Apple TV Plus previews its lineup of new and returning shows coming this spring and summer
• Apple Music announces exclusive USHER content in Road to Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show
• Indie record labels are not happy with Apple Music's new Spatial Audio royalties

Apple has this week announced a slate of exclusive content in the run-up to the Apple Music Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show, which will take place on February 11. 

Apple says the show will be "an epic performance 30 years in the making" when it airs on Sunday. In the run-up to the big game and the halftime festivities, Apple is announcing a broad selection of music and exclusive content including the already-released trailer. Apple is also showing off USHER's entire studio album discography in Spatial Audio, exclusive playlists curated by USHER and NFL teams, and dedicated Apple Music Radio programming. 

Apple has also announced that it will air an interview between USHER and Apple Music Radio’s Nadeska Alexis on February 8 a 10 am PT, available to watch on Apple Music, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, X, or on the NFL Network. 

USHER's Super Bowl Halftime show

You can now listen to USHER's very own My Road to Halftime playlist on Apple Music, a mix of his own work, past Halftime performers, and songs "motivating him as he gets ready for his legendary show."

Legendary producer Jermaine Dupri is also producing "a special USHER MegaMix" of his biggest songs in Spatial Audio on Apple Music. Fans can also pre-add USHER's new ninth studio album COMING HOME, ahead of its release on February 9 on Apple Music. 

If that's not to your taste, you can also check out playlists made by NFL stars Travis Kelce, Stefon Diggs, Davante Adams, Dak Prescott, Jalen Hurts, and Damar Hamlin.

This year will mark the second Apple Music Halftime show following last year's performance by Rihanna. Apple has a multiyear deal with the NFL and Roc Nation.

Super Bowl LVIII will take place on Sunday, February 11 at Allegiant Stadium in Nevada, as the San Francisco 49ers take on the Kansas City Chiefs in a rematch of the 2019 game. 

More from iMore

• Apple Music: Everything you need to know
• How to sign up for Apple Music on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac
• Apple Music or Spotify — which is better?

Apple has gone all in on Spatial Audio on its music streaming platform, recently offering more revenue to artists and labels that use the format. Apple wants to encourage more artists to use the format, so that Apple Music has more Spatial Audio tracks to tempt users from competing services like Spotify.

Artists and labels appear to be discouraged, however — a number of different indie record producers are not happy with the new revenue decision from Apple’s camp.

Spatial record discrimination?

The Financial Times broke the news, and it’s all down to Spatial Audio’s use of the Dolby Standard for surround sound. Apple’s Spatial Audio uses a form of Dolby Atmos to make the music sound like it's coming from all around you, and that costs money for producers to use.

Recording a song in Spatial Audio, including all of the other costs involved in the recording process, adds a further $1,000, according to executives. That would, for example, mean that Metallica’s latest output, 72 Seasons, will have cost the band (or EMI, its record label) an extra $12,000 to record the whole thing in Spatial Audio so that you can hear James Hetfield shout in surround sound.

For labels like the aforementioned EMI, and hugely successful bands like Metallica, that’s not going to be all that much in the grand scheme of things. For smaller artists and labels, however, it’s going to be a much bigger ask. Beggars Group, Partisan Records, and Secretly, some of the biggest indie labels that look after some of music's most recognizable names, have already shared some concerns about Apple Music’s new royalties position.

The main issue is that Spatial Audio tracks won’t net you more money in total — instead, the report tells us, Apple “is not paying more money in total: rather, that extra 10 percent will come out of a fixed pot of money. As a result, songs that are not 'spatial' will receive less money.” For record labels, this means that they could stand to make less money unless they adapt their output to Spatial audio. One unnamed senior record label executive says "it’s literally going to take the money out of independent labels", as the shared money pot would find more going to the record labels that can afford the upgrade.

It all adds up to unhappy record companies and artists that are looking to either sort things out with Apple or leave the platform entirely — after all, some of these companies are now facing reductions in revenue of 5-10% if they don’t take up the expensive Spatial Audio format.  A perfect storm of badly thought-through format uptake.

More from iMore

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With the advent of iOS 17.3, Apple has finally added Collaborative Playlists to Apple Music on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. 

First announced at WWDC 2023, Collaborative Playlists is a new feature that lets you invite friends to join your playlist so that all of you can add songs and react to other people’s choices with emojis. It’s another great new tool for sharing music, alongside SharePlay. 

So how do you create collaborative playlists within Apple Music, and what do you need? Here’s everything you need to know about collaborating with Apple Music. 

How to create a collaborative playlist on Apple Music 

As noted, Collaborative Playlists were added to iPhone and iPad with iOS 17.3 and iPadOS 17.3, so you’ll need one such device running the latest version of Apple’s mobile software. Once you’ve got that, you’ll also need an Apple Music subscription, either individually or as part of the Apple One bundle.  

To create a new collaborative playlist in Apple Music:

1. Open Apple Music
2. Select Playlists
3. Tap New playlist

4. Enter your playlist’s name and tap Create
5. Tap the circular person icon with a plus button at the top of the playlist
6. Toggle Approve Collaborators then press Start Collaborating

If you leave Approve Collaborators unchecked, anyone with a link can join your playlist and add songs. If you select Approve Collaborators, you must approve anyone invited to the playlist. 

You’ll then see the Apple share screen where you can immediately send the playlist to close family or friends you regularly communicate with. Otherwise, close this screen, then:

7. Tap the icon with two figures in the top right-hand corner
8. Select Share Invite Link
9. Select a way to share your playlist, either through AirDrop, Messages, or by simply copying and pasting the link

You can also select QR Code and share the playlist with people that way. 

Once a person accepts your invitation and clicks on your link, you can approve them from the same screen:

10. Tap the icon with two figures in the top right-hand corner
11. Select the green tick next to their name
12. Press Done

Both you and your friend can now add songs to your playlist in the same way you would any other Apple Music Playlist, simply tap “Add Music” and get started. 

People you invite will also need an Apple Music subscription to join your collaborative playlist, just as you'll need one to join other people's. Apple's Collaborative Playlists support up to 100 people. 

 How to react to songs in a Collaborative Playlist 

Once someone has added a song to the playlist, you can react to it with an emoji:

1. Tap on the song to begin playing
2. Tap the song playing to bring up the full Now Playing Screen
3. Tap the emoji icon between the song’s title and the favorite button

Tapping an emoji will show a short animation and add the emoji to the song’s card in the playlist. 

You can stop the collaboration at any time by pressing the people icon in the top right-hand corner and pressing “Stop” if you own the playlist or “Leave” if you’re an invited guest. 

You can also turn any of your existing playlists into collaborative ones by selecting them from your playlist menu and tapping the circular person icon with a plus button at the top. From there, simply follow the step number 4 onwards. 

Apple Music will now pay up to 10% more to artists who create music in its immersive spatial audio format, as the company looks to push its surround sound format. 

According to Music Business Worldwide, from January “music available in Spatial Audio on Apple Music will receive a greater share of royalties from the platform.” The report says Apple sent an update to its label partners confirming that beginning with January 2024’s month-end payments “pro-rata shares for Spatial Available plays will be calculated using a factor of 1.1 while Non-Spatial Available plays will continue to use a factor of 1”.

That means that artists who make spatial audio content and can get their fans to stream it will receive a 10% boost in royalties. As the report notes, Bloomberg reported in December that Apple may also give extra weight to spatial audio songs, possibly indicating they may be more visible and prevalent on playlists, radio stations, and more. 

Tune in to more spatial audio 

The news was also reported by 9to5Mac, which claims that “Apple Music users do not necessarily have to listen in Spatial Audio for the artist to be rewarded with the bonus payout.” According to that report, bonus payouts are calculated “based on the proportion of Spatial Available to Non-Spatial Available plays.” So if an artist’s music is all available in spatial audio, they’ll get a 10% royalty bonus even if listeners don’t play those versions. The report further states that “Apple says more than 90% of subscribers have tried listening to a song in Spatial Audio” on Apple Music. 

9to5 reports Apple sees the 10% bonus as a reward for making higher quality content and compensation for the extra time the mixing requires. While the implementation might sound confusing, Apple is clearly basing the incentive payout on artists making spatial music available, rather than on whether fans actually choose to listen to it. This is important because, while devices like AirPods Pro and AirPods Max support the format, not all headphones do. Furthermore, not all listeners enjoy spatial audio and some may simply choose not to listen in that format. 

A 10% increase in streaming royalties is a significant bump for artists, so expect to see plenty more spatial audio tracks arriving on Apple Music very soon.

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• Apple Music: Everything you need to know about Apple's streaming service
• How to watch music videos in Apple Music
• 6 things Apple Music needs to steal from Spotify

Apple Music Classical is expanding to more countries worldwide starting from January 24. Posting to X (formerly Twitter), Apple revealed that the classical music application will arrive in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao later this month.

Since launching in early 2023, Apple Music Classical has given classical music listeners a hub for all their symphonies, separate from the main Apple Music app. Apple Music Classical features improved search, listening recommendations, and exclusive artwork that can’t be found on the original Apple Music platform.

With the impending launch in these Asian countries, Apple Music Classical is now available in most countries that have access to Apple Music. However, those in Russia and Turkey are still waiting for the platform’s release.

Available on iPhone, iPad, and Android, the classical music haven still hasn’t reached Mac. That said, there are even bigger omissions that are more important than the platforms released on Apple’s computers.

Apple Music Classical is available as part of your Apple Music subscription at no extra cost. Apple Music is available in the U.S. for $10.99/month.

Where are the downloads?

Since Apple Music Classical launched in March 2023, users have been clamoring for more features in the application. Most notably, the lack of offline listening means users can’t use Apple Music Classical when their device is offline, like on an airplane. iMore’s Feature Editor, Daryl Baxter, says, “For the many things that Apple Classical gets right, such as its user interface and Spatial Audio tracks, there are a few fatal flaws that stop me from recommending it wholeheartedly.” One of these is the lack of ability to download tracks alongside the lack of a shuffle option, meaning you need to listen to songs in order, no questions asked.

While the launch of Apple Music Classical in more countries is a good thing, we’re hoping to see Apple improve the application so that it can become a genuinely useful app for classical musical lovers everywhere. As it stands, no one would argue with you if you opted to use the standard Apple Music app instead to listen to Beethoven’s 5th.

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If you’re hoping to see Apple show its hand with what it plans to do with AI, a new report states that you won’t have long to wait.

According to Mark Gurman’s ‘Power On’ newsletter at Bloomberg, work is being done on a language model, internally called Ajax. This is meant to be powering Apple’s generative AI and will allegedly give its Siri assistant a major boost in generating better results from user queries — and being more useful than it has been in the past as a result.

The newsletter goes on to explain that Apple’s AI is set to expand to other apps, such as playlist creation in Apple Music, and will be able to auto-complete some lines in its Pages and Keynote apps. A new version of its Xcode programming suite will also come with AI features, which will help developers complete certain lines of code that they may be struggling with.

Apple is allegedly set to unveil its AI plans at its developer conference, called WWDC, later this year, which is usually held in June. With Microsoft bringing its Copilot AI to Windows 11, as well as an app for iPhone and Android devices earlier this month, it remains to be seen if Siri will finally get the shot in the arm it has sorely needed for years.

No, Apple is not playing catch up with AI — iMore’s take

It’s been over a week since I started using Microsoft’s Copilot app on my iPhone, and I’ve enjoyed it. Asking the assistant for certain requests that I’d have used Google for brings me greater detail than using that search engine in my web browser.

Over the weekend, I discovered that I could use the app on my Mac, thanks to Apple silicon having the ability to run some iPhone apps in macOS. So now, I have Copilot running in its own window as I work away, generating random images to help give me some inspiration at certain times as I work on personal projects.

As I use Copilot more, I can’t help but wonder how Apple’s take on AI could help with Siri later this year. We’ve seen the company’s efforts in improving its assistant in the past, such as Siri Shortcuts, where third-party apps could better integrate with it — but Apple hasn’t mentioned Siri Shortcuts since it was announced in 2020, giving the impression that Apple has abandoned improving Siri further with the feature in favor of a deeper AI reworking.

Reports such as those seen in Gurman’s newsletter have previously stated how Apple ‘missed the mark’ with AI in 2023, and that it’s now playing catch-up. But to a point, I disagree. Apple’s focus has been elsewhere recently, making sure that its newest product, Vision Pro, is a success when released later this year.

To me, Apple’s plans with AI and improving Siri were simply sidelined for higher priorities, such as its headset, the newest Apple silicon chips like M3, and the iPhone 15 line. So this year, it’s all to play for with Siri and AI. I want to see it be faster and more detailed in its responses, but also in being helpful in the other apps that Gurman’s newsletter mentioned.

So with Vision Pro allegedly set to be released in a few short weeks, once that’s out of the way I’m excited to see what Apple’s take on AI will be, and the new reasons I’ll have to use Siri every day, rather than every month.

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• Microsoft is adding a Copilot key to its Windows PCs

Your Apple Music library is, in a way, an extension of yourself in music form. Hundreds of hours of tunes, carefully curated over years of listening, formed by your shifting taste and new music that’s released by old favorites. It's a part of you, like a physical record collection or rack full of tapes.

Imagine, then, that your Apple Music library was tanked in some bizarre bug that plagues the streaming service, breaking the syncing between the iPhone version and desktop. Your library — inaccessible on all your devices. No fix. No response from Apple. Only music-induced misery.

A sorry state of affairs

The crux of the issue, as noticed by Macrumors, is that users are unable to add new music to their library and that music previously added is no longer showing up. For some users, it’s just on the desktop app, showing a message that says, ‘Genius results can’t be updated right now. An unknown error occurred (18004).’ Others are finding that the issue has spread to their iOS devices as well, rendering their full libraries completely inaccessible — and their Apple music experience ruined.

Users have taken to the Apple support community to complain, and some Reddit users are suffering from the issue as well. There seems, alas, that there is not yet any kind of fix for the issue — although user Nonstiq on the Apple support community found that “Signing out of iCloud, changing (their) password, and singing back in again” helped. Others tried this to no avail, however, so it looks like it depends on the user.

Beyond that, there is still no word from Apple on a fix on the way or what the problem is — either way, it’s not a golden indictment on Apple Music and its services. Hopefully, the issue is fixed before users are pushed to other platforms.

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Why does Apple Music not understand how a 'like' button works? Why is this an issue in 2023?

I’m one of those people who have bounced between Spotify and Apple Music since Apple released its music streaming service in 2015 to compete in the streaming space. Then, when Apple rolled out its Apple One subscription bundle service in 2020, I made what has turned out to be a permanent switch — since the value of that bundle has been so great.

However, there has been one thing about Apple Music that has always bothered me, and it’s not that Spotify has a superior recommendation algorithm or that it has much better playlists. It’s that Apple Music, for whatever reason, hasn’t figured out how to correctly implement a simple way to like a song.

Apple Music’s ‘like’ button has been broken for years

For years, Apple Music hid the 'like' button under a menu. When you were playing a song, you had to dive into the menu to find the option to like a song or add it to your library. Later, they finally brought this 'Add to Library' button onto the Now Playing screen, but kept a separate “like” and 'dislike' button in the app. I never understood the need for this — if I like a song, I want to add it to my library. Why make this more complex than it needs to be?

Then, Apple updated the Apple Music app with iOS 17 and I finally thought they had fixed the confusion — one like button to rule them all. But no! They somehow made it even worse. Now, the button on the Now Playing screen is to 'favorite' a song.

What happens when you favorite a song? It adds it to your library. Oh, okay. That makes sense. But wait! It also adds it to a new playlist called Favorites. What? Why in the world does this need to exist? Apple already has a Favorites playlist — it’s the Favorites Mix playlist that is automatically updated weekly for you. And there’s more! You can add a song to your library without favoriting it and adding it to that useless playlist, but that option is once again buried in a menu.

Apple Music, please rip off Spotify

This entire experience makes absolutely no sense. There are now two ways to 'like' a song and one does one thing and the other does two things. There’s also a 'dislike' button that is buried in the menu and that no one uses. Where is my 'it just works' company with this confusing piece of crap?

Please, Apple Music, just rip off Spotify with this one. The app has one button — an 'add' button — that adds a song to your 'Liked Songs' when you tap it. There’s no separate library and 'Liked Songs' playlist that you have to worry about. If you tap the “add” button after you already liked the song, a menu pops up if you want to add it or remove it from the playlists you have created.

That’s a great and simple user experience. There’s no separate 'like' or 'favorite' or 'dislike' button that you need to use in order to feed Spotify’s algorithm There’s one button. Do you like a song? Click the add button. That’s it. That’s all it needs to be.

I’m going back to testing both

Of course, Apple Music does have its advantages. The app is still the go-to streaming service for Lossless Audio quality and Spatial Audio, and a lot of artists have been releasing their music in these new formats on the platform. The Live Lyrics feature is definitely better than Spotify and the Now Playing update is far more beautiful and immersive than the Now Playing screen that Spotify currently rocks.

However, Spotify has added a lot of recent updates that make me consider switching back. From its new desktop, mobile, and TV app design updates to adding 15 hours of audiobook listening per month for Premium users, the company is really diversifying itself and adding a lot of value for its subscribers.

I’m going to give Spotify another try. With Apple One getting even more expensive and Spotify having a more coherent user experience, I’m interested to see if I’d prefer heading back to a world without Apple Music. At the very least, I’ll know how to actually like a song!

Apple Music Classical has had a bigger impact on my listening habits than any other app, song, playlist or streaming service this year — and it'd be nearly perfect aside from a few small issues holding it back.

But first, a little background. There’s a little-known fact about the music I listen to — a bunch of it comes from soundtracks, and this all stems from a love of the music of the Back to the Future trilogy.

Back in the 90s, the adventures of Marty McFly amazed my 7-year-old self. I was lucky enough to go to Universal Studios in Florida, where I was dazzled by the Back to the Future Ride. As is usually the case when a ride ends at a theme park, you find yourself at the gift shop. But to me, this wasn’t just any gift shop — it was one full of the Back to the Future merchandise of my dreams.

This was before ‘merch’ from multiple brands was freely available to buy on the internet. Here, I was looking at toy versions of the Delorean time machine and brand-new VHS versions of the trilogy — and I was in awe. Yet, it was the soundtracks that caught my eye the most. After buying them, I listened to those three discs from each film constantly on my CD Player. From then on, I bought soundtracks from other movies, such as Star Wars and James Bond — and eventually, game soundtracks, such as Tomb Raider 2.

Fast-forward to 2023, and my Spotify library has a huge soundtrack playlist that has tracks from Tekken 2, Licence to Kill, the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV show, Tomb Raider 4, and much more. 

But now thanks to Apple Music Classical, my method of managing soundtrack music has evolved into listening to movie tracks from a dedicated app instead of a dedicated playlist on Spotify. Yet there are some basic flaws that, for now, keep me from using it as a fully-fledged alternative.

Classically Apple

For those unaware, Apple Classical launched in March 2023 as a way of strictly listening to classical music. This way, you could listen to Mozart and John Williams without having your playlist interrupted by a random track from Snoop Dogg, while getting all the complex metadata associated with composer, musicians and recording not easily accessible on other streaming apps.

As a subscriber to the core Apple Music service I could access this app straight away, and I was keen to try it out and see how it could work for me with my music tastes. I wanted to see if Classical could help me discover a bunch of composers, similar to how Apple Music did the same for me with new artists in genres I previously never listened to.

Admittedly, over the course of a few months, I did discover some great albums, such as Bizet Carmen. But my curiosity and taste made me quickly focus on browsing film score composers.

Eventually, I added composers as favorites so I could quickly access works by John Williams and Bill Conti with ease. Adding albums and songs to different playlists was a joy too, so I could put different genres of movies into different sections, depending on what I wanted to listen to during the day.

If you’re also a lover of soundtracks, this may be ideal for you as well. However, several baffling limitations have stopped me from switching over to Classical exclusively for my soundtrack listening sessions.

Is this app stuck in 1998?

For the many things that Apple Classical gets right, such as its user interface and Spatial Audio tracks, there are a few fatal flaws that stop me from recommending it wholeheartedly. 

First of all, you can’t download tracks. Granted, you can add to your Library, or to a Playlist in Classical, but if you have no internet whatsoever, you’ll be brought to the  screen pictured above. It’s incredibly frustrating, especially when you can do this in Apple Music with the same tracks and playlists that you’ve added in Classical.

This isn’t the only flaw, however. You can’t shuffle any music in the app. So, if you decide to create a bunch of playlists, like I have, you’ll have to be careful in the order that these tracks find themselves in. It’s either in one order or not at all. This is a baffling choice to me, and if this is intentional by Apple for some reason, it feels like only a basic request to eventually get this functionality added. That the app shipped without it at all feels remarkable.

Finally, Apple Classical is only available on iPhones, iPads, and some Android devices. It’s not even available as a web app, let alone a Mac app, much like how Apple Music and Spotify are. If you click on a link that’s from Apple Classical in a web browser, you’ll be advised to open up the app. For someone who works on a Mac daily, I currently have no choice but to have my iPhone nearby, with an active internet connection, in order to use Apple Classical.

Essentially, all of these reasons are why I’ll still be using Spotify for soundtracks. I can listen to tracks offline, on my Mac, or through a web browser with no issues through the Swedish streamer's service. It’s a shame, as the foundation of what Apple Classical offers is fantastic. Yet as it can’t get the basics right, I’ve got no choice but to keep Apple Classical to the back of the orchestra for now and wait until Apple decides that using the app offline, and being able to shuffle tracks, is not sacrosanct.

When Apple announced iOS 17 back in June of 2023 as part of the big WWDC event, there were plenty of new features unveiled. Most of them made the big September release date while others have appeared in dribs and drabs via smaller software updates ever since. That continued with the recent iOS 17.2 update, with features like the hotly anticipated Journal app finally coming to the iPhone. But there are still some features missing.

To be specific, there are two features that are yet to make it out of Apple Park and we don't know for sure when they'll arrive. Apple says that both the ability to use AirPlay in hotel rooms and enjoy collaborative Apple Music playlists are still coming, and that they'll be with us at some unspecified point in 2024. It's good news that the features are still on the way, but it's strange that they haven't yet arrived.

That's especially true for the collaborative playlist feature considering it was part of earlier iOS 17.2 betas before being removed. And the fact that two features that have pride of place on Apple's iOS 17 webpage won't arrive until 2024 isn't a great look.

Missing features

None of this is helped by the fact that these two features are ones that will be very useful once they finally ship, of course.

The AirPlay feature in particular could be a huge boon for those who travel a lot. Apple's updated webpage says that the feature is "coming in an update in 2024, with the feature allowing users to "scan a QR code on a hotel room TV and then "securely share videos, photos, and music from your iPhone to the TV." For anyone who just wants to catch up on the latest must-watch Apple TV Plus show, that could be a huge addition. And it isn't yet clear why it's one that couldn't make its way into iOS 17.2 or a previous version, for that matter.

The second feature is one that Apple Music fans will surely enjoy when it ships because it will allow people to "Invite friends to join your playlist and everyone can add, reorder, and remove songs." You'll even be able to "use emoji to react to the song choices in Now Playing" if that's your jam, too.

With Apple saying that both of these features will now ship in 2024, we're all in something of a holding pattern. With a 12-month time window, there is plenty of wiggle room there. The saving grace? In a year when the Vision Pro will ship and Apple is expected to unveil a plethora of new iPads, we can only expect that Apple will want to get these features out of the door soon so it can focus on other things. And let's not forget that iOS 18 will start to be a very real concern soon — it's likely to be previewed during WWDC in June with the first beta dropping the same day.

A matter of faith

While we can be relatively sure that these two features will eventually arrive, it isn't a great look for things to get delayed in this way. It's doubtful that we have another AirPower on our hands of course, but when features get delayed it puts further strain on future updates.

Flash forward to June 2024 and iOS 18's unveiling. It's difficult to assume everything Apple shows off will ship when it says it will when two features announced a whole year before only landed a few months ago. This isn't the first time Apple has had to delay things, and it probably won't be the last. There has long been a suggestion that Apple should ditch the one-big-update-a-year method of software development in favor of more frequent, smaller feature additions. If Apple keeps biting off more than it can chew those calls are likely to return.

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A new report claims that from next year Apple is going to reward artists and record labels that create music using spatial audio by adding more weight to the streaming of their songs on Apple Music, improving royalties and increasing exposure. 

According to Bloomberg, Apple "is offering incentives to artists and record labels to produce music using a spatial-audio technology that surrounds listeners in sound," and "plans to give added weighting to streams of songs that are mixed in Dolby Atmos technology, according to people with knowledge of matter." 

As the report notes the higher weighting could see artists who embrace the technology receive more royalties if there songs are played more often. Bloomberg says streamers "wouldn’t necessarily have to play the Atmos version of a song for artists to benefit," with availability in Dolby Atmos the key marker. According to the report the new policy "will encourage artists and labels to record and mix music with Atmos — including older tracks."

Spatial audio is here to day

The report cites sources who say mixing in Atmos "is broadly affordable" and worthwhile for established artists, however this implies that smaller independent artists or labels may not benefit in the same way. Apple offers spatial audio on Apple Music, best enjoyed through devices like its AirPods Pro 2 or AirPods Max. 

However, spatial audio on Apple Music isn't an exact science. As it stands lots of the spatial audio tracks on Apple Music vary drastically in mix quality and loudness, making for quite a jarring listening process, at least in my experience. Legendary producer Giles Martin, who produced The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in spatial audio for Apple Music revealed that even his attempt "doesn't sound quite right" and that he was planning to go back and remix the tracks. In July 2021, Martin said that two years previously spatial audio was "unlistenable" but had since improved. 

iMore has reached out to Apple for comment on the news. 

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Taylor Swift is Apple Music’s 2023 Artist of the Year, taking the crown from last year’s winner, Bad Bunny, and the live event to celebrate her achievements may appear on Apple TV in the future.

Taylor Swift’s Eras The Experience will take place in New York City on December 8 and December 9, with Swifties receiving notification of successful ticket applications early this week. While Swift will not be in attendance at the event, the 40-minute listening party could be filmed for Apple Music or Apple TV, according to the event’s FAQ.

On the event sign-up page, in response to “Will there be Audio/Visual recordings of the event?” the FAQ states, “Yes. By attending this event, you are agreeing that visual and audio recordings of the event, including your voice and likeness, may be used for commercial purposes worldwide and on a royalty-free basis.”

So, if you missed the December 2 sign-up window or don’t live in the Greater New York area, you might be able to listen to or watch the best of Taylor Swift in the coming months. That said, if this exclusive Apple Music event doesn’t come to streaming, The Eras Tour Concert Film will be available to rent on Apple TV starting December 13.

Apple Music’s 2023 Artist of the Year — for good reason

Swift’s incredible year brought her record-breaking Eras Tour across the globe, with estimates of over $1 billion in sales. The success of Swift’s tour was seen throughout Apple Music, with “65 of her songs reaching Apple Music’s Global Daily Top 100, more than any other artist.”

Apple Music’s statement also revealed, “More people listened to Taylor Swift in 2023 (on Apple Music) than to any other artist in the world, setting a new all-time record for a single year on Apple Music. In fact, Swift's streams on Apple Music have more than doubled since last year, growing at a rate that is a new record not only for Swift, but for any star of her stature. She is currently the No. 1 most-streamed female-identifying artist in Apple Music history.”

While she may have had one of the best commercially successful years in all of music history, Swift didn’t get the award for Apple Music’s most streamed song of the year, which controversial country music artist Morgan Wallen won earlier last week. That said, considering her accolades for 2023, we doubt she’ll be too fussed.

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Just as Apple Music’s Spotify Wrapped rival, Replay, has finally launched for 2023, Apple has also announced the most popular songs of the year to go with it. Surprisingly, Taylor Swift has not topped the list and that spot is filled by Morgan Wallen, just two years removed from an incident that saw his music temporarily removed from the service. 

The top ten streamed songs in 2023 were: 

• Last Night – Morgan Wallen
• Flowers – Miley Cyrus 
• Kill Bill – SZA
• Rich Flex – Drake, 21 Savage
• Snooze – SZA 
• Anti-Hero – Taylor Swift 
• Idol – YOASOBI 
• Under The Influence – Chris Brown
• Creepin’ – Metro Boomin, The Weekend, 21 Savage 
• Subtitle – Official Hige Dandism

Songs like Flowers, Kill Bill, Anti-Hero, and Under the Influence all had popular TikTok sounds this year, possibly contributing to their popularity. 

A controversial winner?

In February 2021, TMZ showed a video of the country music star using racial profanities while with friends after a night out drinking. He has since apologized for this incident and donated $300,000 to the Black Music Action Coalition. Just months before this incident, he was removed from an SNL appearance for partying during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown. He was invited back on SNL at a later date, where he joked about the episode. 

Apple Music and Spotify both removed Wallen’s music from their services in 2021 due to his use of the slur but returned it shortly after his apology, in which he said he was “embarrassed and sorry.”  

Despite only nabbing the number 6 spot, Taylor Swift won Artist of the Year for both Apple Music and Spotify. To celebrate her Spotify win, she put out “Losing Me (From the Vault)” for fans to listen to right now.  

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Spotify did more than just change the world in which we listen to our music — it shifted the way that we interact with it, with metrics presented with flair that most other streaming services lack. 

One of the coolest that comes around every year is ‘Spotify Wrapped,’ A shareable ‘story’ that shows you and your friends all your embarrassing music secrets, as well as how long you’ve listened overall in minutes. 

Now, Apple Music's version, named ‘Apple Music Replay’ is back for 2023.

The service lets you see your most listened-to music, including track, album, genre, and artist. Once it’s all finished and you’ve scrolled through your results, you get a fancy playlist that Apple puts together for you. Replay 2023 will show you all those stats from the last year and then let you share them with your Apple Music-using and non-Apple Music-using friends.

Apple Music Replay 2023 — iMore’s take

Apple Music Replay simply isn’t as good as the scoring systems and engaging ways of seeing your listening habits in Spotify. Wrapped is just one part of the puzzle, although it is a big, colorful one.

Using a webpage rather than the Apple Music app, you can find out your stats by logging in and clicking a couple of buttons. It’s fun, yes, but it lacks the entertainment value and ease of use of the Spotify option. It's shorter, the animations less involved, and the stats less in-depth.

The weirdest bit? It’s formatted like a phone screen. It looks fine if you go to the webpage on your phone, but it still feels like it was designed to go in the app — and it feels very, very strange that it doesn’t.

Apple Music is getting better and better, and there are loads of reasons to pick it over the Green alternative. Fun, personality, and user engagement, however, are not one of them.

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Spotify, the music streamer that continues to prove hugely popular among both iPhone and Android users, is reportedly testing a new feature that actually disables an existing one. Yes, you read that right.

Not only is the new feature the ability to turn another feature off, but that feature is actually one of the very best things about Spotify. Perhaps the reason that some people use Spotify over competing music streaming services like Apple Music and others.

That feature is personalized recommendations, something that uses magic and rainbows (probably not magic and rainbows) to make recommendations for new music based on the songs, albums, and playlists that you listen to already. It's mighty impressive and it, by all accounts, works way better than anything that the competition has been able to muster in all the years they've been trying to catch up.

So all of that being said, the concept of a new feature being all about turning that stuff off might seem strange to you. But you'd be wrong because it could actually be amazing and one of the best features to come to Spotify in years. Let me explain.

So what does this feature do, exactly?

Before I explain why this news is so exciting, I have to explain what the news actually is. According to a MacRumors report, Spotify is now testing a tweak that will turn off personalized recommendations — the system that uses the magic and rainbows (still probably not magic and rainbows) to help recommend songs to music fans around the world. Little is known about this change, or how it will actually work, but MacRumors says that beta code found by Aaron Perris suggests that changes are afoot.

Before someone emails me to explain how Spotify's recommendation engine performs its recommendation wonders, a quick explainer on how it really works. Although it would be better if it was magic and rainbows. In short, Spotify pays attention to everything you listen to including the songs, genres, and other data points, and then feeds that into an AI-powered system that makes recommendations based on all the information it was given. The result is custom playlists that are full of music adjacent to songs you're familiar with but are actually new. The result of that is new music for you and more listening minutes for Spotify.

So we can all agree that the personalized recommendation system is pretty great. So why would you want to turn it off?

I'm glad you asked.

Kids. You'd want to turn it off if you have kids

OK, so let me set the scene. As a former Apple Music subscriber who recently relented and switched to Spotify like the rest of my family. I'm also the one who normally plugs my iPhone 15 Pro Max into the car when we're out and about and yes, I have two kids.

As anyone with kids will know, their musical tastes don't necessarily align with mine. And it's their songs we listen to when we're out and about, of course. That means that Spotify's recommendation fairy dust gets sprinkled on more Boy With Uke than I'd like to admit, and not the Fleetwood Mac that I'd like to listen to.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

Apple Music is about to gain a new feature in iOS 17.2 that will allow listening history to be disabled based on the Focus Mode applied at the time, which in my example would be the Driving one.  That way Apple Music won't use music played while driving to inform its own recommendation system, and I'm very hopeful that's the route that Spotify is taking here. Because oh boy, my custom recommendations are taking a hammering.

My fear is that Spotify's new feature will work in much the same way but that it'll make me tap a button each and every time I want to enable and disable the personalized recommendations and that'll suck. Mainly because I'll probably just forget to turn it back on afterward!

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When Apple Music Classical launched back in March of 2023 it did so after months of rumors and leaks. The classical music-themed streaming service is part of Apple Music and is included in the same subscription, but there's a catch — it has its own app, downloadable via the App Store.

That alone might be seen as strange, but the strangest aspect of the launch was that there was no iPad Apple Music Classical app — something that Apple has now fixed eight months later.

The new iPad app comes as an update to the existing Apple Music Classical iPhone app, with Apple making it into a universal binary that can be downloaded on both big and small screens.

Music to classical fans' ears

Apple announced the new iPad support via the App Store update itself, adding release notes that simply say that it was "introducing Apple Music Classical designed especially for iPad." Those listening on an iPhone do still have something new to look forward to, with Apple adding that Apple Music Classical version 1.1 also brings with it stability and performance improvements. There's no word on what exactly that means, however.

Apple Music Classical's specialist app works in much the same way as the main Music app but with special features designed to work best with classical compositions. Such music often has different and more detailed information about composers and those involved in the production, something the Apple Music Classical app can surface in a way the Music app cannot. Fans will also find specially-curated playlists, too.

If you want to download the new Apple Music Classical iPad app you can do so right now — it's a free download. Just keep in mind that you'll need an Apple Music or Apple One subscription.

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If you own a PS5 and have been fixing to take Apple Music for a spin, now is the time to do it — Sony is offering you up to six months to do it for absolutely free.

Apple Music is available on a whole range of devices from iPhones to Macs to Apple Watches and yes, even the PS5. With more than 100 million songs and streaming being completely ad-free, Apple Music is a great way to both listen to the music that you love and find new music that you aren't already familiar with.

Unlike so many offers, this one isn't limited to new customers which means that those who haven't used Apple Music for a while can still get in on the action. Sony says that "qualified returning subscribers" will get five months free, however — down from the six months offered to those trying Apple Music for the first time.

Listen up!

Getting in on the new offer is pretty simple, so long as you already have a PS5 and an Apple ID. If you don't, you're going to want to get that all squared away first but we're going to assume that you're good to go from here on out.

Sony says that its special offer is available from right now and music fans will have until November 15, 2024, to take advantage of it. To do that, open the Apple Music app on your PS5 or download it if you don't already have it installed — you'll find it under "All apps" in the Media section of the PS5's software.

Once you have the Apple Music app open you just need to sign in with your Apple ID and the free trial will be applied automatically. It's that simple.

Keep in mind that your Apple Music subscription will continue after the trial at which point you'll start paying, so be sure to cancel if you don't want that to happen. 

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Apple Music’s $5 ‘Voice Plan’, which let you use Siri to play and find new music, has been scrapped after just two years.

According to 9to5Mac, code in iOS 17.1 beta alluded to the service disappearing back in September. Now though, any mention of it has been removed from Apple’s website as recently as this week, and when you try to sign up to Apple Music, the plan is nowhere to be found.

It was a useful plan when it debuted in October 2021, especially for those with accessibility needs, and cheap too. Yet Apple’s smart assistant doesn’t have the greatest reputation for being fast, or reliable. There was also a lack of basic features that made the experience frustrating to use.

Was Siri to blame for the plan disappearing? - iMore’s take

While the loss of this plan may be disappointing to many, the fact that you had to exclusively use Siri would have taken some convincing. We’ve all been in a situation where it’s failed to tell what we’re asking, or it refuses to do basic functions, such as failing to tell me a band who was number 1 in the charts back in 1997. There were also some features that are available on other plans.

With this being the cheapest plan of Apple Music, you didn’t get access to Lossless and Spatial Audio tracks, which gives a 3D audio effect for accessories that support it, such as the AirPods Pro.

You also couldn’t use the lyrics feature, where you could turn your iPhone into a mobile karaoke machine. There was also a lack of access to the thousands of music videos or Apple Music Classical. This was the most basic of basic plans. So much so, that your hands were also lacking in order to use the service.

So now, you have three options to choose from with your Apple Music subscription. Sign up for the standard $10.99 plan, or if you’re a student, you can pay $5.99 a month. There’s also a family plan for $16.99 where six users can use the same account, and have all the benefits that Apple Music offers.

However, perhaps the main benefit is that you won’t have to use Siri anymore, and that will be a relief to many.

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Kickstarting the truly portable music revolution in 2001, the iPod has become perhaps one of the most recognizable products in its legacy lineup — and now it’s back. Kind of.

High street fashion brand Urban Outfitters now has iPods on its site for you to buy in various guises, from the original model to an iPod mini. They’re being sold by 3rd party seller Retrospekt — which is now calling the iPod lineup ‘vintage’. Thanks, Retrospekt, for making us feel old. Now drop those prices.

Don’t buy an iPod on Urban Outfitters

Why not? Because the iPod Mini that we found on the Urban Outfitters site is being sold for a cool $200. That’s only $50 less than you could have bought one new back in 2004 when the then-smallest iPod was first released, and now it’s roughly $170 over what you should actually be paying.

These are refurbished products, with Retrospekt saying they have fresh batteries and new, more modern storage of greater amounts than you’d find in a disk-drive-based model from eBay, but you still shouldn’t pay the premium that is being peddled here.

For all intents and purposes, unless you are a collector looking for a mint-in-box device that still comes in all its plastic wrap, you shouldn’t be paying any more than $30-$50 at a stretch for a 20-year-old iPod — refurbished or not.

iMore’s take — don’t pay $200 for an inconvenient novelty

I am uniquely placed to make recommendations here, mostly because I still use iPods to listen to music. I keep a couple in my drawer — a blue iPod mini, and an iPod Classic with a new case on it. Both have new batteries, and new storage (tripling the 128GB I had in the Classic, in fact), and they are both dumb.

They are hobbyist equipment for weird users who like old things, not viable portable music players in the year 2023. They don’t play music from Apple Music or Spotify, they require MP3 or AAC files from your Mac, they need headphones with a cable, and they need a surprisingly large amount of pocket space to work. For those of us who are audio geeks, they are loads of fun, but for the punter with $200 burning a hole in their pocket, they are a daft plan.

If you really want an iPod mini, or original iPod for that matter, to muck about with, make it a project. Buy a second-hand model off eBay for $30, grab a new battery for $10, and then an SD card for $20 with an adapter to use it to replace the now ancient hard drive for a further $20. That’s now just $80, and you’ve got a little weekend hobby on your hands. Like a project car, only it takes up less space and doesn’t eat away at your finances every week when the exhaust manifold goes to pot.

They’re not hard to mod. iFixit has excellent guides about taking all of them apart, and there are a million YouTube videos on the topic. Just, don’t pay $200 for one. There are better things to spend your time with than overpriced old tech that can be bought cheaper elsewhere.

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Spotify almost has it all. Podcasts. Audio Books. An AI DJ that speaks to you. Sharable playlists, and even more on top. Now it’s made one of its ‘all-in-one’ music app features even better — there’s a new merch hub on each act's page where you can search for your favorite artist's t-shirts, vinyl, and more within the app. Previously the app connected with the band's store itself, but now it can all be bought directly from Spotify.

It’s just another feature that Apple Music doesn’t have, as Apple’s services remain disparate and separated across several apps.

There is one thing, however, that Apple Music has over the Swedish green circle: Hi-res streaming.

Spotify, where’s our hi-fi tier?

Spotify has been pumping out new feature after new feature in recent months, from the aforementioned AI DJ that some love and some utterly despise, to the addition of a few hours of audiobooks to your premium subscription. This new merch hub is more of an iteration of an existing feature, but it's another notch in Spotify’s quill over the competition.

Yet still, we remain without that all-important hi-res streaming. It’s a feature that every other streaming platform offer, with Amazon's ‘Music Unlimited’ filled with hi-fi tracks, and the likes of Qobuz and Tidal are focused on it. Crucially, Apple has it in Apple Music for no extra charge — something it looks like won’t be said for Spotify.

We are assured that Spotify hi-fi is coming, although there are rumors that it will only come on an extra, even more premium subscription plan. Going up against Tidal alone, this might work, given how expensive the Jay-Z-backed streaming service is, but when the likes of Amazon and Apple give you hi-res tracks for free, it could be seen as a bad move.

Perhaps Spotify will add more features to its hi-fi tier, like podcast exclusives and more hours of audiobooks. Until then, however, we remain without any hi-res streaming on Spotify — but at least we can buy our favorite merch from the Spotify merch hub.

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Spotify has, for a long time, been more than just a music streaming service. There is music news on board, artist merch to browse, short-form videos, and hours upon hours of podcasts available within your ever-burgeoning subscription. Now, as rumors of Spotify HiFi show their heads once again, Spotify has added thousands more hours of content in the form of over 150,000 audiobooks, free (to an extent) for Premium subscribers to access.

A shot over the bow of Amazon in particular, aimed squarely at upsetting the balance of the retail giant's separation of Audio-book purveyor Audible and its music streaming service Amazon Music Unlimited, this inclusion only widens the appeal of the Swedish streamer. The streaming service with the most just got even… mostier, as it were.

The single-platform model

When it comes to adding new features to its stable, Spotify has little choice but to stick it into the only app that it curates. Unlike the likes of Amazon and Apple, it can’t just add a new app to its roster, one that comes pre-installed on devices. Where Apple can release Apple Music Classical and introduce a new service that way, or Amazon can buy an existing service and bring it on board to its suite of apps, Spotify has to think about recognition — people know Spotify for the Spotify app, and not much else.

Spotify also has bigger ambitions than to become a niche music streamer like Tidal, or other hi-res options like Qobuz. These are apps for one thing, and one thing only: Listening to music in the highest quality possible. Spotify doesn’t want to restrict itself to just music, that much is already obvious with the inclusion of podcasts, and its comprehensive domination of the space.

If anything, however, the fact that Spotify has to put its new features in one app only makes for a better selling point for the Swedish company — it’s loads more convenient to have everything in one place.

While I am a user of Apple’s music and podcast services, I find myself increasingly annoyed with the way that everything is separate from each other. The Podcasts app looks different and feels different from the Music app, and I have to navigate both to find exactly what I want. Add Audible for audiobooks and everything becomes even more annoying to navigate, as well as adding in something even worse, in the form of extra cost every month.

The Cost Factor

I pay for an Apple Music subscription, an Audible subscription, and then a couple more hi-res streaming platforms so that my Audiophile credentials remain unchallenged. All in, I pay around $60 per month for my audio subs, and that’s not including the family Spotify plan that I’m a part of.

Now, if Spotify can bring all the things that I pay for into one, helpfully inexpensive subscription that I can lay down the dollars for every month, I would be eternally grateful.

Spotify’s new AudioBook inclusion is filled with 150,000 books, from Patrick Stewarts' memoir to Mary Beard’s Emperor of Rome. That’s all included in your premium subscription, and you can listen to 15 hours of books for free every month. Compare that to the Audible subscription, which gives you a credit every month to buy an audiobook that you can listen to — anything you buy on Audible beyond that credit will cost you upwards of $40. Go up from the base $7.99 a month plan to the Plus $14.99 plan, and you get an extra credit.

Spotify costs $10.99 per month, already a decent deal when compared to its competition. Add in that you get a long audiobook included in that sub, and it becomes a whole lot more tempting and convenient than $7.99 for Audible plus the extra for another streaming platform. If that Spotify Family sub could be my only streaming thing, that’s one more large Lego set per month, after all.

I am tempted…

What’s keeping me back

… But I am not convinced. I used to be a long-time user of Spotify, and there were a number of different factors that drew me away from the service. First and foremost is audio quality — and there is a reason that I pay so much for Tidal and Qobuz, the two premier Hi-Res streaming platforms.

Apple Music, Tidal, and Qobuz all support lossless, high-res streaming. Apple Music is like the stepping stone to the latter services, offering streaming that’s not quite as good as the others for a better price. Now, I value hi-res streaming perhaps more than others, and as such pay the very high price to get exactly what I want — but Spotify might have an opportunity here to really nail things down in Tammy land.

I am already annoyed that Podcasts, Audiobooks, and Music are all separate apps, but I am willing to be annoyed in exchange for increased streaming quality. If Spotify were to now include hi-res streaming to rival the likes of Tidal and Qobuz, I would be far more likely to want to switch over, and potentially save myself a great deal of money.

Until Spotify can provide that hi-res streaming, however, this music, audiobook, and podcast listener will continue to listen over multiple different apps, paying through the nose for the privilege. From my point of view, these apps all still have my libraries on them — my audible subscription has all the books I’ve bought over years of use, and the podcasts app tells me when my favorite podcasts have something new for me to listen to. In the end, making the shift to Spotify for some but not all of my requirements hardly feels worth it.

I do, however, understand that I am an outlier. A freak with no leash, a niche customer with weird requirements. For everyone else, this could be huge — and it should make Amazon and Apple look up from their piles of money.

An industry shakeup

Spotify already offered Audiobooks in its app, but you had to pay for them. It was a statement of intent, however — ‘Hey Amazon and Apple, we’re coming for you’. A statement of intent that has now become an active part of Spotify’s business model, and it might just make for a massive shakeup in the streaming space, courtesy of the normal user, who doesn’t care for things like hi-res streaming.

For most people, the idea of one app that does everything could well be what brings them over to the platform. One app to search, one app to listen, and one app to conquer. And conquer is exactly what Spotify wants to do, as it watched its numbers fall after a series of blunders over the last couple of years.

There was the weird app update that made it feel like a green version of TikTok, and the still oft-rumored hi-res streaming update that is yet to be realized, amongst other issues that saw users start to try out the likes of Apple Music and Amazon Music. Since then, however, the app has been stronger than ever, and it could well be that audiobooks bring back some old users of the platform.

It will most likely, however, make Amazon and Apple think more about how their apps are presented, and how users access their content. Will Amazon bring Audible into its Music Unlimited subscription? Will Apple look at getting Audiobooks on Apple Music, or merging its services into one app that’s called something different?

Spotify has music streaming nailed for the everyman at this point, with loads of fun extras like Spotify wrapped. Podcasts and Audiobooks only serve to make the app stronger, and while weirdos like me aren’t going to be so easily tempted over, it’s very likely that other users will — and that could be very interesting for Spotify’s competitors.

Apple has just announced the star of its next Super Bowl halftime show, and it's Usher. Pretty much exactly a year after Apple Music was announced as the new sponsor of the Super Bowl halftime show, we now have the announcement of the next one. 

Variety is reporting that the 2024 Super Bowl halftime show is set to happen on Sunday, February 11, 2024, with Usher set to perform at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, NV. Usher is set to follow the 2023 Super Bowl halftime show star Rihanna, who famously performed at the show while pregnant.

You'll be able to stream it with Spatial Audio

Apple has always had a solid connection with the music industry, and another step in that direction has been the company picking up the title sponsorship for the Super Bowl halftime show. This will only be the second time the company sponsors the show, but it's association with the Super Bowl goes all the way back to the 1984 commercial, which is possibly the most popular Apple commercial of all time.

Speaking about headlining the show, Usher said, "It’s an honor of a lifetime to finally check a Super Bowl performance off my bucket list. I can’t wait to bring the world a show unlike anything else they’ve seen from me before. Thank you to the fans and everyone who made this opportunity happen. I’ll see you real soon."

You'll be able to stream the Super Bowl halftime show, and that too with Spatial Audio. Apple’s Vice President of Apple Music, Apple TV+, Sports, and Beats, Oliver Schusser, commented, "The Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show is one of the most highly anticipated music events of the year and we’re excited to bring this legendary show to fans all over the world in Spatial Audio, along with tons of exclusive videos, interviews, playlists and so much more across Apple Music."

There will also be other performers as usual, we expect.

Apple has agreed to buy a new music label, with plans to roll it into the Apple Music Classical library. It'll also be added to Apple's in-house music label, Platoon.

That's according to the label itself, anyway. While Apple is yet to confirm the acquisition, BIS Records announced the move on X, the social network previously known as Twitter.

BIS Records is known for its range of classical music and recently celebrated its 50th birthday.

A half-century celebration

The record label also shared news of the buyout on its website, with founder Robert von Bahr saying that he is "immensely proud of what our small team of people has accomplished during this half-century."

"We thought long and hard on how to maintain and build upon our prestigious history and looked for a partner who would further our mission, as well as an increased global platform to bring classical music to new audiences all over the world," the note reads. "Apple, with its own storied history of innovation and love of music, is the ideal home to usher in the next era of classical and has shown true commitment towards building a future in which classical music and technology work in harmony. It is my vision and my sincerest dream that we are all a part of this future."

The note ends by saying that BIS will become part of Apple Music Classical and Platoon, but there is predictably no word on how much money changed hands to make the deal happen.

Apple routinely buys companies for talent and technology and in this case, to add a collection of music to a relatively new streaming option. Apple Music Classical launched earlier this year on iOS followed by Android, and offers a dedicated listening experience for those who enjoy classical music.

It's unclear when or indeed if Apple will confirm the buyout.

Apple Music is perhaps one of the most easy to access apps that Apple runs, given that it’s available on all major platforms. Interestingly, it also gets all the same updates, no matter the platform you’re using — and it looks like the version we’ve been playing with in the iOS 17 Beta is coming to Android users as well.

Apple Music’s New Look going beyond iPhone

Apple Music becomes arguably prettier and prettier each year, and this new update for iOS 17 makes it even nicer to look at. The now playing screen has received the most attention, with a large, display-covering image of the album artwork, along with some truly stunning live artwork depending on what you’re listening to. It’s a lovely update to an already attractive app, and Android users can use it too.

Also coming to Apple Music, and by the looks of things the Android version too, are some of the new features that have come in the most recent version of the iOS 17 Beta 3. There’s a new song credits section in the app, brought over from Apple Music Classical. It tells you more details about the music you’re listening to, with information about the song, the artist, the album, and even the songwriters and producers.

The new credits feature is easily accessible through the three dots menu and then by hitting the View Credits button — and excitingly for the audio weirdos amongst us, it will also tell you if the track is available in Lossless and Dolby Atmos Spatial audio. This is coming to the Android version of the app likely when iOS 17 launches for the public, and out of Beta.

One of this year's most exciting Apple Music features is Collaborative playlists; a long-needed social element for Apple Music that allows users to make playlists together, adding, removing, and moving songs around at their leisure. This isn’t coming quite as soon, looking set to be heading our way slightly later this year.

Apple Music and Android: iMore’s take

We love Apple Music, and all of its features; and the new version in iOS 17 is the best it's ever been. It looks great, has some more great features (Such as the new Discover Station), and feels more and more like a real competitor to Spotify every update. The fact that more users than ever can also use it on their devices from Windows laptops to Android handsets is only a massive bonus — the more that can use the app, the more incentive there is for Apple to keep improving it.

The new features are additions that we love as well. The new album artwork screen is attractive, and really makes the app stand out in the music streaming space, while the credits option lets you learn more about the music that you listen to. The Collaborative Playlists function that’s coming as well is an exciting addition to the app as well, and we can already see the iMore team playlist getting filled up with all manner of bonkers music choices. 

Apple Music is a very good music streaming app, but it does lag slightly behind its competitors when it comes to music discovery. Now, however, Apple has added a new feature called ‘Discovery Station’, and it aims to help you find more tracks that you might like. We’ve given it a spin — here’s our first thoughts on the new feature.

A new way to find tunes

Discovery Station acts as a way for you to find new music that you might like, linked to the music that you already have in your library. That means if you listen to a lot of Lana Del Rey, you’ll get more music that sounds like Lana Del Rey. Have a lot of Metallica in your library? Then it will show you loads of thrash metal, so that you can find all the angry, cathartic loudness you need.

The new station is found under the Listen Now section of the Apple Music app, within the Top Picks segment. In essence, it’s a constantly updating playlist that populates itself with loads of music so that you can just pop on and have a listen to. AppleInsider first noted that the new feature pulls inspiration from your library, as well as music that you’ve liked previously — although also seems to avoid putting music from your existing library in the list.

Wouldn’t be much of a discovery tool if it put music you already listen to in there now, would it?

Apple Music Discover Station: iMore’s take

Apple Music is a very curated service, with playlists and play-next queues populated by real people, and not fuelled by an AI DJ such as services like Spotify. That means that it’s a little more restricted in the breadth of what it usually suggests to you, but it also means that you’re less likely to skip tracks as they play — someone who likes the same music as you has made the list after all, and that human connection usually means you’re more likely to enjoy the music as well. 

Despite our best guesses, Apple does not say how this new Discover Station is curated, although it seems unlikely that there’s someone at Apple curating lists for every single user of the platform. It’s likely some kind of algorithm is behind it, although there is no confirmation from the platform as to how it actually works.

But from a brief play with it, the feature is a super solid way of finding new tunes in. My music taste, for example, is about as eclectic as it comes — in one breath shifting from Norwegian Black Metal to crispy 50s jazz recordings and contemporary pop acts. The Discover Station, in my experience, did a great job of finding music like that in my library, showing me tracks from artists I knew, but also artists I’d never heard of before. The play queue seems to be generated on a track-by-track basis, so you only know the next single track rather than what the next few tracks are going to be.

Technically, Spotify does still do a similar sort of curation slightly better; there is an up-next queue that shows you the next couple of tracks that will be coming up, and the interface remains slightly cleaner. This is, however, a welcome addition to a constantly improving music app.