If you thought the Beats Pill looked cool, then Japanese artist Verdy has something even more adorable for the new speaker.

A limited edition collectible bear toy, developed in collaboration with Beats, Vear is a new "collectible art figure" that holds the newest version of the speaker.

"Meet "Vear," the latest creation by VERDY. This 3D-animated character is the first re-imagined Pill Character for the new Beats Pill in the form of a collectible art figure," the product description reads.

"This collaboration introduces a cream-colored bear named “Vear” holding the latest Beats Pill between its paws."

You can check out the fun animated trailer below.

Vear will set you back $500

While Vear is sadly sold out at the time of writing, it was offered in a bundle that included the Beats Pill speaker.

The bundle, however, cost $500. Considering the Beats Pill itself is around $149 new, that's a steep cost for its admittedly adorable companion - although the fact it sold out suggests that customers didn't care too much.

The comments on the YouTube channel certainly suggest others were less impressed by the price tag, but you can still pick up just the speaker itself.

What's new with the first Beats Pill since 2022? The portable speaker has Bluetooh 5.3 for lower-latency, and you can use it as a power bank while you're out and about, while the USB-C port can be used to play lossless audio, too.

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Spotify has announced that it is bringing an end to support for the Car Thing. The Car Thing was a cool accessory that was essentially a display that you could attach to your car and then use as a remote control for your Spotify music.

The accessory was semi-discontinued just a year after it hit the market but now, a couple of years later, those who have been happily using their Car Thing ever since will soon have to find an alternative solution after the company confirmed its demise.

In an email sent to Car Thing users, Spotify confirmed that it is discontinuing the product, and as a result, it will stop working on December 9, 2024.

The clock is ticking

A Reddit post shared the email sent to users in which Spotify said "While this chapter is closing, we're working on new, innovative ways to enhance your drives in the future."

Car Thing cost Spotify subscribers $90 and was a way for people to enjoy the streaming service on an in-car display without using their iPhone and it was a good option for those whose cars don't support CarPlay. It remains to be seen what Spotify has in store from here, but an online FAQ does say that the company has "0 plans to release a replacement or new version of Car Thing". Those hoping that this news was simply the precursor to a new, better version are set to be left disappointed.

As for the Car Thing that you might have in your car right now, there isn't much that you can do with it beyond December 9, unfortunately. At which point it'll probably find a new home in that drawer of old and obsolete tech that we all have at home. Or the bin. Probably the bin.

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Apple has reportedly chosen to challenge a €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion) fine slapped on it by the European Union over concerns that it prevents fair competition in the music streaming space. The fine came following a years-long complaint by Apple Music competitor Spotify, but Apple has reportedly filed a suit in the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg with a view to overturning the original decision.

Spotify had originally argued that Apple forced its prices up because it had to cover the costs associated with the App Store and its payment processing.

The EU ultimately agreed with Spotify, but Apple is of the belief that the EU has so far been unable to prove that App Store rules have impacted Spotify and other companies in the ways that have been alleged.

An incoming court battle

Bloomberg reports that unnamed sources believe Apple has chosen to appeal and that the company will now face another legal battle with the regulator.

Apple hasn't done particularly well when going toe-to-toe with the EU to date having previously been slapped with a record €13 billion tax bill over a dispute related to Irish state aid.

The EU also famously forced Apple to adopt the USB-C port on the iPhone 15 while EU citizens can also install third-party app marketplaces following the launch of the EU's Digital Markets Act. Apple continues to duke it out with the EU over that act, with some developers arguing that its attempts to comply with the DMA have not been in good faith. Apple has also been forced to make other changes including offering iPhone owners the chance to choose their own default web browser.

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If you're waiting for lossless music streaming to come to Spotify, you aren't alone. While Apple Music already offers its own lossless music, Spotify has so far been unable to get its act together. That could be about to change, and it might finally debut alongside a new add-on rather than as a new pricing tier.

Spotify has been talking about its Spotify HiFi or Supremium subscription offering for years now, and it's so far been unable to ship it. The new tier was expected to sport lossless music streaming but so far, that hasn't happened.

But now a new report suggests that changes are afoot, but lossless audio won't be part of a new tier as originally expected. Instead, it's thought that the high-quality streaming option will debut as part of the Music Pro add-on that will include support for DJ remixes and more.

Sounds good

This is all according to a report by The Verge based on code that was spotted over on Reddit. That code says that “lossless has arrived” with support for “up to 24-bit/44.1kHz” FLAC files.

There is also talk of a new feature that will enhance sound played via specific headphones, with the AirPods mentioned specifically. It remains to be seen what that will actually do, not to mention the fact that pricing and availability still remain something of a mystery. There's no word on how much the new Music Pro add-on will cost, but it'll be an option that is offered to Spotify Premium subscribers.

So far Spotify has not mentioned what all of this means, but it's possible that there is something on the horizon given the new code discoveries.

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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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Spotify is reportedly ready to increase the price of its subscription offerings, with the music streaming service seeking to pay for its expansion into podcasts and audiobooks while battling to become profitable in the long term.

It's reported that the streamer intends to increase prices in five markets by the end of this month including the UK, Australia, and Pakistan according to a new report. That report also notes that the United States will receive a price hike as well, although that won't happen until later this year. The price increases are expected to be around $1 or $2 but it isn't clear how that will translate to local currencies.

The news comes as Spotify continues to diversify away from its music streaming roots in an attempt to reduce its reliance on music labels and cut its expenses at the same time.

A new basic tier

Bloomberg, citing an unnamed source, says that Spotify also intends to add a new lower-cost tier to the mix that will include access to music and podcasts for the same $11 asking price as before, although there will be no access to audiobooks without buying them ad-hoc.

Spotify reportedly still intends to launch the so-called Supremium plan that will offer improved audio quality among other things, but there is no word on when that will actually arrive.

Spotify has historically lost money each year and it sees price increases as a way to change that. It currently spends billions of dollars each year to pay royalties for the music that its users listen to, another reason to try and expand into audiobooks and podcasts.

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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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If you're a Spotify Premium subscriber you already enjoy 15 hours of free audiobook listening right now with the option to buy books if you want to listen to them at your leisure. Now, the audio streaming company has announced that those who won't have a Spotify Premium subscription can enjoy the same 15-hour listening time — so long as they sign up for the new Spotify Audiobooks Access Tier.

The new tier, which is available as an option via the Spotify website, sells for $9.99 per month and gives users access to Spotify's library of content for a limited time. Users can of course also listen to podcasts and music for free but they'll have to make peace with the ads that make that possible if they want to go that route.

However, there's an argument to be made that they simply shouldn't. With Spotify Premium available for $10.99, some might argue that the audiobook-only tier is somewhat pointless when you consider that it only saves book lovers a single dollar. If they also happen to enjoy podcasts and music, Spotify Premium is a much better option given the ad-free nature of the beast.

$9.99 Vs $10.99

Spotify announced its new audiobook tier via a press release, saying that it is "continuously innovating to provide the best possible offering for every kind of audio fan." It goes on to say that since launching audiobooks as part of its Premium plan it's seen a 45% increase in free users searching for and then interacting with audiobook content. "Now we are introducing a new plan option to give our listeners a variety of choices," Spotify says.

Spotify's  Audiobooks Access Tier gives those in the United States access to more than 200,000 titles for $9.99 per month and, as mentioned, they'll be able to enjoy other audio content in the form of podcasts and music while dealing with ads.

By contrast, Premium offers the same audiobook features with ad-free podcasts and music thrown in which makes the new tier's $9.99 price point seem costly.

Spotify believes otherwise. "Spotify offers several subscription plans tailored to fit a variety of users’ preferences and will continue to invest in giving our listeners more options to cater to their unique needs," the press release ends.

There are questions left unanswered by the press release, too. It's unclear what happens when a user's 15 allotted hours have been exhausted, for example. There doesn't appear to be an option to pay for extra time, unlike Spotify Premium. That could be something that changes in the future, however.

Those who are waiting for Spotify's Supremium subscription are going to have to continue to do just that, however. There were no more details shared about lossless audio streaming or availability, nor do we know whether the audiobook-streaming offering will go global any time soon, either.

For those who just want to listen to their stories in audio form and either don't listen to music or are tied to another service for whatever reason, the audiobook-only tier might be a viable option of course. But for everyone else, it just doesn't seem cheap enough to be worthwhile — after all, how many ads do you need to hear when listening to music to be worth an extra dollar on your subscription fee?

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It's been a strange few weeks for the Spotify app, at least the iPhone one. Reports from December suggested that the company was working to bring in-app purchases back to its app after having removed the ability to sign up for Spotify Premium back in 2016. That was based on code found within its app which showed that there were indeed references to options that would allow people to sign up once more.

However, things got more interesting when just a day later Spotify was moved to respond, saying that it wasn't bringing in-app purchases back to the iPhone after all. Farshad Shadloo told The Verge that “we have no plans to switch IAP [in-app payments] on at the moment.”

That, we thought, was the end of the story. But as is so often the case with a good drama, there's more to it than we originally thought. Because here we are, just a few weeks later, dealing with a distinct case of deja vu. Because once again, Spotify's app has its in-app purchase code back and nobody seems to know why. Spotify had removed it following last month's discovery but today it's back — and it's the exact same code that was discovered before.

Spotify can't make up its mind

The discovery was made by @aaronp613 on X, the social network better known to the majority of the planet as Twitter.

Backing up for a minute, it's difficult to understate just how big a deal Spotify's relenting on in-app purchases could be. Because it could change the way that people use Spotify on their iPhones.

Right now, people who want to subscribe to Spotify Premium must do so via the service's website, something that's a pain but far from a huge deal. Spotify ditched in-app purchases via Apple's App Store because it didn't want to pay the 30% cut that Apple takes from each transaction. That's something other companies also do, and for the same reason.

But while subscribing to Spotify Premium isn't something people do repeatedly, the same can't be said for another feature of Spotify. The app now allows people to listen to audiobooks, much like Audible and similar options. But because Spotify won't pay Apple its cut, audiobook fans have to buy their books via the Spotify website and then download them in-app. That's something people do much more often, and it's sure to be a bone of contention for many.

Could Spotify be looking to add some sort of in-app payment system to allow people to buy audiobooks in-app? If it is, it'll have to use Apple's payment system rather than its own — Spotify only needs to look at Epic Games to see why. Or try searching the App Store for Fortnite, perhaps.

What's going on?

Spotify couldn't have been more clear when it said that it wasn't bringing in-app purchases back, but it wouldn't be the first time that a company has said one thing and then done the opposite.

It's also possible that Spotify is getting ready to piggyback off future laws that might require Apple to allow third-party payment systems, but time will tell. For now, we can do little more than wait to see what Spotify has in mind. Because there's one thing that is clear. No matter what Spotify says, that code is designed to do something. What it is, we'll find out sooner or later.

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Reports yesterday of Spotify adding in-app purchases for subscriptions back on iPhone have been debunked by Spotify’s global head of corporate and policy communications.

Speaking to The Verge after new code was spotted in the Spotify app on iOS with an in-app payment system including a checkout screen, Farshad Shadloo said, “We have no plans to switch IAP [in-app payments] on at the moment.”

Spotify removed the ability to subscribe to Spotify Premium in 2016 in an effort to avoid Apple’s 30% commission for purchases made through apps on the App Store. Earlier this year, Spotify migrated those subscribers over to its payment system.

Spotify’s dispute with Apple creates friction in the Spotify app experience on iOS with no ability to buy audiobooks, similar to how Amazon Kindle users can’t purchase content in the Kindle app on their Apple devices.

While reports yesterday seemed to hint that there was a slight shift in the relationship between Spotify and Apple, it looks like there won’t be any changes to the way you pay for Spotify Premium on iPhone anytime soon. 

Earlier this week, Spotify revealed that 17% of its workforce were to be laid off, roughly 1,500 employees. This is the third announcement of job cuts this year for the company, which is looking to find a remedy to its continued financial losses.

No IAP for now

While the lack of in-app purchases in the Spotify app is inconvenient for Apple users who use the green and black streaming service, it’s something we’ve become accustomed to over the years.

It would be ideal to see all subscriptions like Spotify Premium inside Settings on your iPhone, but for now, it looks like we’ll have to keep tabs on our Spotify login details and use the company’s website for all future payments.

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Paying for Spotify Premium has been a complicated business in recent years, but it might be about to get a whole lot easier. Giving Spotify money as an iPhone owner has meant doing so via the company's website for some time, but there are now signs that subscribers could be able to pay for their music fix using Apple's in-app purchase system once more.

Spotify has not allowed people to sign up to its Premium subscription service via an in-app purchase for more than seven years at this point, and it stopped allowing those who already signed up to continue paying that way earlier this year. The move was all about preventing Apple from taking a cut of its subscription money, something that has proven to be a bone of contention for many a developer over the years. It even saw Epic Games get Fortnite kicked out of the App Store for good, and it's why Epic and Apple have been in court on and off ever since.

It's also why Spotify subscribers can't buy audiobooks in the iPhone app, but there is a sign that something is afoot after it was found that there are new code references to an in-app payment system in the latest beta version of the Spotify app.

More ways to pay?

This is all according to a MacRumors report that's based on the discovery of those references. The report notes that it isn't yet clear what those in-app purchases are going to be, but the system in play does include an in-app purchase checkout screen and retry panels for when a payment fails.

Most curious of course because, as I just mentioned, Spotify has been very clear about its disdain for Apple's in-app purchase system and the way that it takes a cut of all transactions that are processed that way. But there are currently no ways to bypass that system without getting kicked out of the App Store — just ask Epic Games — so it's beyond odd that these references exist.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has not been quiet about the way he feels in terms of the App Store. He called its rules "absurd" back in May 2023, and it's unlikely that his stance has changed.

What's really going on?

There are so many questions around this news that it's difficult to know where to start. Is Spotify going to implement Apple's in-app purchase system here? If it is, will that be for the Spotify Premium subscription or for buying audiobooks? Or is a new external payment system on the way?

There have been moves to open the App Store and allow third-party payment systems before with the EU often at the heart of them. It's possible that Spotify is simply getting its ducks in a row ahead of time, ready in case Apple is forced to allow external payments. Dating apps in the Netherlands already have that capability after Apple was forced to implement a system to allow it in 2022 — but not until it had spent $52 million in fines over the matter.

Apple doesn't want to allow transactions outside of the App Store for obvious reasons, and it still takes a cut of those dating payments, too. One thing is sure — all eyes will be on Spotify to see what comes next.

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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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Spotify is adding to its already impressive library of personalized playlists with Daylist, a playlist that's designed to change with your moods, your preferences, and your listening habits throughout the day.

At multiple points throughout the day, Daylist will update with new tracks based on how you've used Spotify to listen to music over the course of the last 24 hours.

So, if you usually listen to pop tunes as you head into work, electronic music as you focus, and then motivational, bass-heavy songs at the gym, Daylist will serve up that kind of music as and when you usually listen to it.

As if that didn't sound fun and handy enough, as well as new, constantly updating tracks, your playlist will get a fresh title to reflect the vibe of that time of day. The examples Spotify gives in the official Daylist press release are: "thrillwave, happy dance, pumpkin spice."

You have the ability to save your Daylist as a new playlist. In fact, Spotify recommends you do this right away, as once the next fresh update rolls in and changes everything, the previous iteration will be gone.

Make a day of it

Spotify already offers a bunch of fantastic playlists personalized to you and your tastes, like Discovery Weekly and On Repeat. You're also served up a number of playlists that may not be unique to you but that align with your tastes on your homepage.

With Daylist, Spotify is employing the same techniques that it uses for its other playlists, particularly its Niche Mixes offering. This allows users to type in an activity or vibe, and Spotify will create a customized playlist for them from it.

Spotify says that Daylist is rolling out to both Free and Premium users in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand. Just head to spotify.com/daylist to see yours or find it in the Made For You hub on mobile.

On the eve of iOS 17 being released to the public Apple's Shazam app has now been updated to add support for one of the iOS 16 update's biggest new features.

The feature, support for Lock Screen widgets on the iPhone, is one that was heavily promoted by Apple in September of 2022 and became a foundational feature for the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. But despite Apple owning the music recognition app Shazam, the app has only just released an update that adds support for Lock Screen widgets.

With the new feature added, Shazam users can now identify songs right from their Iphone's Lock Screen without additional taps necessary — like finding and then opening the app on their Home Screen.

Music to 2022's ears

The new Lock Screen widgets are available as part of the latest Shazam update, downloadable via the App Store for all those who already have the app installed. Don't yet have Shazam? You can get it yourself now, and it's completely free.

As for what the new feature can offer, Shazam's App Store release notes say that people "You can now open Shazam and identify songs directly from your lock screen with our Lock Screen Widget. Or, try our wider widget, which displays the last song you identified."

You don't need the best iPhones to use this new feature, either. Sure, the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max have always-on displays that make Lock Screen widgets even more accessible. But they can also be used on other iPhones — you just have to wake the phone's display before you can see them.

This will of course also be the case when the new iPhones arrive this September, too. The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus will support Lock Screen widgets via iOS 17, but the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will be the only models that support an always-on Lock Screen.

Spotify Blends are a wonderful way to connect with friends, broaden your horizons, and show off all the underground music you listen to. But being one of many ways that Spotify will make playlists for you, it can be a little confusing to find initially. 

Released in 2021 and presumably an effect of long lockdowns and time away from family and friends, Blends are a very charming little idea that help you feel a little closer to those who are far away. 

You can wait for your friends to invite you to their blend or take the initiative to make a blend with nine of your coworkers. Being one of many unique features that Apple Music hasn’t copied just yet, it’s one of the best conversation pieces for any Spotify user. Here’s what you should know about Spotify Blends and why the expected iOS 17 changes to Apple Music aren’t quite enough. 

How to make a Spotify Blend on iPhone and iPad

A Spotify Blend is a collaborative playlist automatically created by Spotify to blend the genres and style of your music collection with your friends. It finds songs you have in common and tries to give a middle ground between those that aren’t.

When you are in the Spotify app on your iPhone or iPad, you simply have to click on the search bar in the bottom middle of the screen. From here:

1. Click on Made For You in the “Browse all” section. Click on Create a Blend in the “Made for Us” sectionClick Invite to invite your friends to a blend
2. Send the link to a friend and the Blend will be automatically made for you

Frequently Asked Questions

One more thing… Is Apple Music in iOS 17 catching up?

Spotify has managed to secure its spot as one of the best music apps out there, partially due to innovations like Spotify Blend. Despite paying artists over double for each song stream, Apple has under half the paid subscribers that Spotify has. You have to pay to use Apple Music, and each year, users are left out in the figurative cold when Spotify Wrapped comes out. All the pretty graphs showing the ridiculous amount of times you listened to Have a Nice Life’s Deathconsciousness have noticeable Spotify branding, and this organic FOMO marketing leaves many wondering why they pay the Apple Music fee each month. 

Music is a great connector. Even if you come from different backgrounds and don’t share the same common knowledge, our ability to connect over music grounds so many humans around the world. Spotify makes sharing music an occasion. Spotify Blend automatically adds multiple different music tastes together and aims to find common ground. Comparatively, Apple Music comes across as rather insular. 

This being said, the iOS 17 update for iPhones, coming later this year, comes with some changes to Apple Music. As well as small quality-of-life improvements like a better UI and crossfade feature, it is finally introducing collaborative playlists. With this, you can connect to another friend's playlist digitally and add your own songs. You can add extra people in at any point, see who added songs, and even react to new song choices. 

But collaborative playlists have been on Spotify for years and can be accessed without paying extra for the feature. The upgrades to Apple Music look interesting, but its competition has been doing a lot more for a lot less this whole time. Apple Music, as our Twitter account states, is an excellent service, but Spotify does a better job at connecting people. Apple Music is a means to an end, whereas Spotify is often an experience in itself. 

The battle between Apple Music and Spotify is likely to be one you’ve already chosen a side in given the prevalence of music streaming, and while there are plenty of positives for each, I’ve long been a Spotify user.

That comes down to three main reasons; its Windows app is far better than using iTunes in 2023, its recommendations feel more consistently close to what I’d actively seek out and listen to, and Siri integration on Apple Music is so inconsistent while, interestingly, Spotify tends to nail my requests placed via Siri more commonly.

Those last two features had me interested in Spotify’s new AI DJ feature, and while I’d be lying if I said I felt entirely comfortable handing over so much of my audio decision-making to what is ostensibly a robot, I did so for research - just for a week.

What’s in a voice?

Spotify’s AI DJ is based on Xavier “X” Jernigan, head of the company’s cultural partnerships and host of the popular podcast, The Get Up.

While I’d been expecting a comically robotic voice, I was pleased by how smoothly the AI DJ introduced himself and how easy the process was. Simply search ‘DJ’ on Spotify, and it gets cracking.

‘X’ runs through songs in what it describes as “vibes” – short blocks of around three to five tracks that fit a certain theme. 

Some are self-explanatory, such as surfacing songs that I’ve been listening to regularly anyway, while others dip into years gone by to identify key tracks from that year (remember Despacito?).

It’s arguably a bit of smoke and mirrors that leans heavily on Spotify’s already solid recommendations, but I found myself enjoying each “vibe” and the way X introduces each.

They’re not all introduced, however. There were some moments where he just launched me into a track or two with little fanfare, but as silly as it sounds, I came to quite enjoy the interactions when they did pop up, where X was naming songs or artists and referring to me by name. Maybe I need to get out more.

Just vibing

For all the excellent work X does, it’s worth noting that the AI doesn’t get it all right, all of the time.

Just as other AI models draw from the same search results and data and regurgitate it such as ChatGPT and Bing Chat, I found Spotify’s AI DJ would recommend artists in my current rotation, play it, and then recommend it again shortly after.

It’s not a huge issue, but it did lead to a fair number of recurring appearances from some of my regular 2023 artists. Thankfully, some “vibes” are dedicated to new music identified to fall within a user’s tastes, so tapping the DJ button to move along these was welcome for me.

X can also bring plenty of knowledge, letting you know various trivia tidbits about songs or artists. Whether that’s touring schedules, major career milestones, or who played Glastonbury this year, it’s been a fun step closer to the FM DJs I grew up listening to in the car.

These are short anecdotes, not getting in the way of your next track by any more than a few seconds, and it’s a fun way to learn about artists, albums, or individual songs.

I was also impressed that the AI DJ is integrated into the Spotify app through CarPlay. Tap it to kick things off, and switch up the vibe with a tap. Spotify has always been one of the best CarPlay apps, but it was still a pleasant surprise to have X in the passenger seat.

While I’ve no issue with X’s persona, I do wonder how far we are from third-party voices and personalities being added, too. It’ll be interesting to see if any alternatives spring up, especially given Spotify is impressively malleable with things like themes on desktop.

Over to you, Apple

If Spotify’s AI DJ does end up being the future of music discovery, then it feels like Apple will need to do some catching up.

As much as the company stands by Siri, it remains the least smart “smart assistant” that I’ve used in my time. If I can’t rely on Siri to set a timer consistently with a voice command, can I realistically expect it to queue up the music for my workday?

That may be harsh, but I remain surprised that Apple Music Voice is a chargeable option, given in my experience, Siri remains inconsistent at best and incompetent at worst. 

Regardless though, Apple Music recommendations have been steadily improving, and since Spotify’s AI DJ is an extra layer on top it may happen.

And yet, Apple Music still has a larger library and better audio quality, so perhaps the two will continue to diverge into separate paths.

For now, I’m going to settle in and see what X has in store for me this evening.

Shazam, an Apple-owned app that can listen to songs and then identify them, has a big new update. And it's one that makes it much more likely to find the song you just can't quite place.

That's because the new update, which can be downloaded for free from the App Store, includes support for listening to music in third-party apps. Those apps include TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

While Apple namechecked those specific apps in the Shazam update's release notes, it does also work in other third-party apps.

Sounds awesome

Apple's release notes say that people "can now identify songs in apps like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube." It goes on to say that they can "Simply open Shazam, tap the blue button, and switch back to the app" that is playing the music that they want to identify. Apple also reminds users to turn on iCloud syncing to ensure that their Shazams are kept safe and sound.

In use, the identified song appears as a notification or in the Dynamic Island on the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. The app only needs to be able to listen to the song for a few seconds before an identification will be made and it's historically been very good at doing so, even when listening to songs in crowded bars and restaurants.

Those who already have Shazam installed should be able to download the update now and people with automatic updates enabled might already have the new version installed. For everyone else, Shazam can be downloaded from the App Store for free.

Music fans should definitely take a look at our list of the best Apple Prime Day deals this week — you never know when the chance to pick up a bargain pair of AirPods Pro or AirPods Max might present itself.

Spotify has had its fair share of issues with the designs of its app. One of the most recent changes completely overhauled the mobile app, and left it looking a little less than stellar.

Thankfully, however, Spotify doesn't seem to have completely lost its eye for good design. The new look that it has brought to its desktop app looks to streamline users' experiences, putting more of their favorite music at their fingertips, with personal libraries and playlists more easily accessed than before. This puts the desktop app into the 'much better than the Apple Music desktop app' territory now, which continues to lag behind the mobile version.

New Spotify desktop features

There are some cool new things that you'll notice upon opening the new desktop app. First of all, the library is no longer a separate section to click through to; it's now a sidebar that can be collapsed. You can add different sections to this sidebar, allowing you to sort through different segments of your library like artists, podcasts, and albums. Like a certain album more than others? Pin it, and get easier access the next time you want to find it.

You can also add your playlists to this sidebar, making them more accessible than before. You can drag and drop songs from the central window into those playlists as well, making adding songs super easy. Those playlists can be easily reordered with a simple drop-down as well if you want to change the way that playlist looks.

The now-playing bar at the bottom remains similar, but there's now a new now-playing view on the right side of the screen. This gives more information about the song that you're listening to, such as artist bios and upcoming concert dates.

All this seems to be a step in the right direction. All the changes serve to make the app easier to use, and bring Spotify on the desktop back on top when compared to its competitors. Now we just need HiFi streaming...

If you're a YouTube Music user who also happens to own an Apple TV, you might be in for some good news because there could be a brand-new app in your future.

Listening to YouTube Music on something like the Apple TV 4K right now means using the YouTube app, but that could be about to change according to a new report.

That report claims that Google is considering a special YouTube Music app for the Apple TV, making the music streaming service a first-class citizen on Apple's set-top box.

Music to Apple TV owners' ears

This is all according to a 9to5Google report that cites an unnamed "person familiar with the matter," but the thinking does add up.

"There’s already YouTube Music on iPhone and iPad, while a 'Music' experience lives inside the main YouTube for TV app," the report begins. "Google is now planning a separate YouTube Music app for Apple TV that should allow for more direct access, starting with a dedicated app icon."

It's also thought that Google is working on making the YouTube Music app work properly with the HomePod and HomePod mini, too. "Another target for Google is supporting how the HomePod can play music from non-Apple Music services, like Pandora, that have taken the time to build out the media integration. Those third-party services can be set as the default for voice commands," the report notes.

There's no timescale on any of this at the moment, it seems. But while YouTube Music must be well behind Apple Music and Spotify on the list of music streaming services Apple users pay for, it's good news that both features are things that Google is working towards.

The world of music streaming is a competitive one and Apple Music has plenty to shout about. But if there's one streamer that it seems set to perpetually play catch up to, it's Spotify.

The Swedish streamer has been around longer than most which gave it a huge leg up on some of the competition. But it continues to grow in ways few others can compete with and its latest quarter results drive that point home more than ever.

According to those results, Spotify now has more than 500 million active monthly users. That's the first time it's achieved such a milestone, and it's a huge number.

Music to someone's ears

While Apple doesn't share much data about how Apple Music is doing, Spotify isn't bothered about who knows its numbers — likely because they're so positive. A press release confirmed the milestone, adding that the streamer's 515 million active monthly users is a 22% increase from the previous year.

It's a similar story for subscriptions as well, with a 15% growth giving Spotify 210 million people who now pay for their music.

Spotify also says that it saw its total revenue grow by 14% to €3.0 billion ($3.3 billion) thanks to those subscriber gains.

All of this is of course huge news for Spotify, but the release doesn't mention when it will get around to launching its HiFi tier. Apple Music has its own lossless streaming capabilities, but Spotify lags behind here. It also isn't clear whether Spotify will charge a premium for high-bitrate streams.

Whether you'll be strapping on the best headphones you can find and listening to Spotify's higher-quality streams any time soon is anyone's guess, but with half a billion people listening in we have to imagine it's on the way. The sooner the better.

In the meantime, Apple has some lossless and spatial audio music ready and waiting for you.

Is Spotify working for you right now? There's a very good chance that it isn't, with the music, podcast, and audiobook streamer reporting that it's aware of an issue and that it's looking into it.

People have taken to social media, including Twitter, to say that they just can't quite make things work properly right now. Some say they can't make the app work at all while others are having problems logging in.

Those who are already logged in? They can't stream anything either.

No music for you

Downdetector.com, a website that highlights when online services are having issues or outages, shows a sharp increase in people complaining of issues with Spotify within the last hour starting at around 08:00 am EDT. 

Users have flooded social media to share screenshots of the Spotify app saying that "something went wrong" and offering them the chance to try again. That obviously doesn't seem to be helping right now, but the good news is that Spotify is aware of the issue and hopefully a fix is just around the corner.

Until then, competing streaming services like Apple Music remain unaffected, although Apple's own services are far from immune from such problems themselves.

Streaming services failing like this does make us pine for the days when we had a hard drive full of MP3s, but there's no denying the convenience of streaming when it works. Still, even the best headphones money can buy are no good when you can't fill them with music.

Thankfully, outages like this are normally short-lived so go for a walk, maybe have a cup of coffee. Hopefully, we'll all be bopping along to our favorite jams in no time at all.

As for what happened, who knows? But maybe it was related to the controversial interface refresh we were subjected to recently.

Black Friday may be over, but Cyber Monday is just getting started and there are a huge number of savings to be had on the latest tech.

One such deal we've found is for the Beats Flex wireless earbuds that are reduced by over 40% at Amazon.

With multiple colors available, you can snap up the Beats Flex of your choice for $39.95 -- down $30 from the usual MSRP. While they may not have fit into our best AirPods alternative roundup, they're still worth a look.

Save on these workout-focused AirPod alternatives from Apple

• Headphone deals: Walmart | Best Buy | Amazon | Dell

The Beats Flex aren't true wireless earbuds because of the strap that runs between them, but you will find plenty of AirPods-style features.

For one, the Beats Flex have a W1 chip inside the earbuds, meaning you can hold them near your iPhone and pair them instantly. They also offer great battery life, with 12 hours of juice. When you're done, just attach them together to pause playback.

Wondering why they're better for running than AirPods? For one, that strap keeps them from getting lost while you're exercising, and while the Beats Fit Pro have a "fin" on the bud, these are still impressively secure, with multiple tips in the box for a snug fit.

There are more comprehensive on-device controls, too, and while you can find the AirPods discounted down to $79 in the latest Cyber Monday sales, we'd still go for these ahead of them if we were heading on a run or lifting weights.

Spotify has today announced that it is rolling out an updated Apple Watch app that includes a new listening experience, tweaks to artwork, and more.

The new update should be rolling out to everyone downloading the latest version of the Spotify app from the App Store, the company said via blog post.

Sounds wonderful

The newly updated Apple Watch app will reportedly mate it easier to "browse and choose your favorite music and podcasts in Your Library, as well as more quickly download music to listen offline from the watch itself." Spotify also points to a new sleek design that includes "larger artwork, animations, and added functionality."

Spotify says that the new functionality includes swapping on a sign to like it, while the company also notes that it is now easier to spot new episodes of podcasts thanks to a blue dot.

The Spotify Apple Watch app has gone through a few changes of late, some of them enforced. The company recently warned its subscribers not to update to watchOS 9 because it would have prevented them from being able to stream music. That issue was subsequently fixed, and this newly refreshed Apple Watch app will hopefully make it easier than ever to listen to Spotify music via the wearable.

Spotify is now among the best Apple Watch music listening experiences, although we're sure Apple Music would have something to say. Apple's music streaming service is also available as part of the Apple One subscription bundle, making it excellent value despite recent price hikes.

While you may know Shazam as the popular music recognition app that Apple bought in 2018, it seems that Apple may be envisioning big things for the future of the software.

A patent found by Patently Apple describes the future of Shazam as more than just a music recognition service you activate, but rather a way for Apple to tell if you're enjoying the music you're listening to and then automatically start Shazam to identify the song playing. How exactly would Shazam do this? Well, the idea is that it could "determine that a user is interested in audio content by determining that a movement, such as a head bob, and trigger the app to identify the tune that you're enjoying based on your head movement to the beat." 

Of course, it would be hard for your iPhone to do this by itself, which is why the patent has suggested that Shazam might come to more devices like "headphones, a Mixed Reality HMD, an iPad, smart contact lenses, a heads-up display on a vehicle windshield, etc."

It's not just head bobbing either that Apple may want this theoretical feature to identify, but other moves such as "foot tapping, a leap of joy, first pump, facial reaction, or other movements indicative of user interest."

Personally, the idea of my AirPods Pro 2 being able to know if I'm smiling to music I hear around me is cool and creepy all at the same time. 

Auto Shazam might get a lot creepier

Suppose you have the Shazam app (yes, it's still an app) on your iPhone. In that case, you can turn on Auto Shazam, a feature that will run in the background and identify songs for you, but this could take that to a whole new level, especially since Auto Shazam is only available on iPhone at the moment.

Whether you find this neat, weird, or both, it's important to remember that patents mean very little in the grand scheme of things. Apple files many patents for software, hardware, and everything in between that will likely never see the light of day. 

Spotify is finally adding a feature to its iPhone and Android app that it probably should have had years ago.

In a blog post this week the company announced that its Premium users on devices like iPhone 13 will soon be able to choose between pressing play, to hear songs in order, or pressing shuffle, what an innovation. 

"Music—and how you listen to it—should be yours to control," the company stated. "So from the moment you hit play on Spotify, you decide the way you want to hear your favorite playlists or that new album you’re obsessed with. So to make that choice even clearer and simpler, we’re improving the listener experience and separating the Shuffle and Play Buttons for Spotify Premium users."

Paid feature

Of course, in classic fashion, Spotify has managed to take something that should have been a standard feature on its app for years and turned it into a Premium-only feature. 

Spotify says that with its new two-button configuration, users will be able to choose whether they listen to playlists and albums "from the top" or through the unexpected joy of Shuffle mode. 

Spotify says this change is coming to both iPhone and Android worldwide "over the coming weeks."

Spotify continues to dominate streaming markets when it comes to music. News last week revealed it has a 50-60% share of the market in the UK, compared to just 10-20% for Apple Music. While Spotify remains one of the best iPhone apps for listening to music, a new challenger could be on the way in the form of TikTok Music.

Last week it emerged that the video giant had filed for a TikTok Music trademark that will allow users to purchase, play, share, and download music. 

The Music app for iPhone and iPad is a one-stop-shop for your locally downloaded music, tracks from your Mac via iCloud Music Library, the Apple Music service, Apple Music 1 Radio, and a top-notch search option for finding great music and playlists.

The Music app is available on the best iPhone and iPad and other Apple devices, including Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. Here's what it looks like and where to find everything.

Meet the interface

Like Apple's many other stock apps, the Music interface presents itself as a single main screen on the iPhone, with tabs along the bottom of the screen to switch between its various features. Unfortunately, those tabs can vary slightly depending on whether you've subscribed to Apple Music or not: All users have access to the Library and Search tabs, but the Listen Now, Browse, and Radio tabs won't let you play anything without an Apple Music subscription (though you can browse through the content).

Many tabs have sub-menus, which can quickly get you mired in the Music app's interface. Remember: If you get lost, you can always tap any of the tabs to return to the top-level menu; otherwise, you can go up a single level by tapping on the back button in the upper left corner of the screen.

Listen Now

This tab contains customized suggestions, playlists, and songs based on your music taste; it's only available if you have an active Apple Music subscription. For You is divided into several horizontally-scrolling sections, with the Connect social feed at the bottom of the screen.

Top Picks lives at the top of the Listen Now section and contains a mix of weekly-updated playlists and recommended content based on your listening habits.

Recently Played highlights your most recently played playlists and albums from Apple Music; you can view up to 40 by tapping See All.

Made For You links to Apple's ever-growing list of weekly-updated playlists, including Get Up!, Chill Mix, New Music Mix, Friends Mix, and Favorites Mix.

Stations For You offers radio stations offered based on your most recent listening history.

Replay: Apple Music now keeps track of your most-listened-to songs each year. As long as you continue to subscribe to Apple Music, a new list is created.

Under Listening Now, you will find other sections, including New Releases, Artist Spotlights, and more. This changes often and is different for each Apple Music subscriber.

Browse

The core of Apple Music within the Music app, Browse, lets you view the entire subscription service's catalog. It's organized into six sections:

The Carousel is updated daily and highlights specific artists, playlists, and albums on the Apple Music service.

Featured Playlists is Apple Music's master catalog of handmade playlists. Like the other Browse sections, it begins with a carousel; from there, it offers sections for Must-Haves, Music by Mood, Essential decades, Start Your Day Right, Curators, and Playlists by Genre. They are interspersed throughout the section for your perusal.

New Music showcases newly-added music to the Apple Music catalog.

Videos highlights videos uploaded to the Apple Music service. It includes New Videos, Festival Performances, and Top Music Videos.

On the Air 24/7 showcases various stations, including Apple Music TV, Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits, and more.

City Charts offers real-time looks at the 25 most popular songs in cities around the world.

Daily Top 100 details which songs are the most popular in every country with Apple Music.

Genres provides a full list of various genres in the Apple Music catalog; it displays Genres You Follow first, followed by a list of All Genres.

Radio

The Radio tab offers a window into the Apple Music 1 24/7 always-on radio station and various algorithmically-generated stations. As with Listen Now and Browse, you'll need an Apple Music account to listen. Radio is organized into various sections that tend to change often. Among these are links to the service's three always-on radio stations, including Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music Country. Under Radio, you will also find:

Recently Played offers quick access to the last radio stations or on-demand Apple Music 1 specialty shows you've listened to recently.

New Episodes offer links to recent episodes from Apple Music 1 and other radio stations.

Radio also includes content based on genre, international and local broadcasters, and much more.

Library

This tab contains all the songs, albums, and playlists in your personal music collection. Depending on how you listen to music, this can contain:

• Songs you've purchased from the iTunes Store
• Songs you've purchased, synced via iCloud Music Library
• Songs you've saved from the Apple Music catalog (they're considered "yours" for the duration of your Apple Music subscription)
• If you don't have iCloud Music Library or Apple Music enabled, songs from your Mac that you've manually uploaded using iTunes

By default, the Library tab displays five sections: Playlists, Artists, Albums, Songs, Made for You, and Downloaded; you can also tap the Edit button in the upper right corner to add the Music Videos, Genres, Compilations, Composers, and Home Sharing categories.

In the next section of the main Library screen, you'll also find links to your most recent album and song additions.

Playlists displays every playlist you've created on your iPhone, synced with iTunes or iCloud Music Library, and saved from Apple Music (if applicable). You can sort playlists by Type, Title, Recently Added, or Recently Played.

Artists, Albums, and Songs are various popular types for the music in your collection. All are sorted alphabetically by default, though you can re-sort Albums or Songs by Title, Artist, or Recently Added.

Videos, Genres, Compilations, and Composers are sorted alphabetically if you've enabled them.

Downloaded Music appears below the other categories after you've downloaded any music locally to your iPhone or iPad. As its name might suggest, this section contains all your downloaded music; it looks identical to the Library screen, with Playlists, Artists, Albums, Songs, and Recently Added sections, with one primary difference: Everything in those categories has been locally downloaded to your device.

Recently Added displays the songs and albums you've recently listened to in a 2-up art grid below the various music categories. In addition, it will showcase up to 30 tracks of the music you've most recently enjoyed on your iPhone — if you've listened to other tracks on your Mac, those won't sync here.

Made for You is another location for your Replay lists: Each keeps track of your most listened to songs each year.

If you're looking for a specific song or playlist, the Search screen can help you find it. Unfortunately, search is fairly spartan compared to the other tabs in the Music app: It offers a giant search bar, recent past searches, and currently trending searches on the Apple Music platform.

When you tap the Search bar, you'll have the option to search either within your library or (if subscribed) the Apple Music service.

Mini-Player

When you tap a song from your library or the Apple Music catalog, it begins to play and displays in a Mini Player that rests above the tabbed interface. The Mini Player showcases the song's title and album art along the left side, with Play/Pause and Forward buttons along the player's right side.

You can tap the player to expand it into the full player interface, or 3D Touch the player to access options for downloading the song, deleting it from your library (if applicable), adding it to a playlist, creating an automated station based on the song, sharing it, getting the song's lyrics, rating the song, or Loving/Disliking it.

Once the Mini Player has been expanded, you can do the following:

• see the song's album art
• scrub through the timeline
• return to the song's album by tapping on its title
• Go to the previous or next song
• Adjust the volume
• Download or delete the song
• AirPlay the song
• Tap the More button (•••) to get access to the same options as the 3D Touch interface
• Shuffle songs or Repeat them
• View Lyrics (if applicable)
• View your Up Next queue

You can find more information on the Mini Player elsewhere on our site.

Playing songs

To play a song or otherwise interact with it, you can get to it from any of the Music app's tabs, either by tapping on a specific song, selecting an album, or searching for it. Once you tap on a song, it begins playing.

There's a lot you can do simply by interacting with the songs in the Music app.

Finding Playlists

Looking to find, organize, or otherwise control your playlists? Yes, we have a great resource for that!

Up Next queue

Up Next is like a secondary playlist to which you can add music without obliterating what's already playing. It's a powerful feature in the Music app.

Anything else you need help finding?

Any other features you need help finding in the Music app? Let us know in the comments!

Updated July 2021: Updated for iOS 14 and 15.

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One of the best deals to come to Amazon Kids+ is now available exclusively for Prime members! Your family can score three months of access for only $1 by signing up before Prime Day begins on June 21.

So why do I like Amazon Music Unlimited so much? For me, it is all about the user experience, both in the app and through Alexa. I've always preferred the user interface of the Amazon Music app compared to other apps, and find it particularly easy to navigate. There are only four main navigation tabs at the bottom of the screen, which makes it really easy to find what you're looking for.

The Home tab is basically the app landing screen, where you can see albums, artists, and playlists that are featured, followed by new releases, top charts, your recently played music, and other recommendations. The Find tab is a general music search section but also has shortcuts for stations, playlists, top charts, and new releases. Oh, and it shows your recent searches in little bubbles at the top. I find this super-useful, as I often want to revisit something I looked up just the other day. The My Music section is the meat of the app and has navigation for recently played media, playlists, albums, artists, and more. Again, I really like that Amazon Music gives you so many options to access both the individual tracks and albums/playlists/artists you've recently played, and in chronological order. I really dislike that my other favorite service, Apple Music, doesn't support this in a meaningful way. Finally, we have an Alexa tab, which pulls up Amazon's smart voice assistant. Alexa is actually pretty accurate at finding the music I'm looking for if I can't remember exactly what it is called, or don't want to type it into the Find tab. Arguably this could be incorporated INTO the Find tab for simplicity, but it's obvious that Amazon wants to feature Alexa prominently here.

Once you play a track, the user interface is also really nice-looking in my opinion. The top half of the screen is occupied by the album artwork and the bottom half by play controls. If it is a song with lyrics, those lyrics will appear in the top half of the screen in real-time (a feature it had long before Apple Music). At the very bottom of the screen you have additional controls like repeat track, add to playlist, Alexa, cast to another device like an Echo speaker, Airplay 2 device, or Fire TV, and shuffle. The bottom of the screen also has a bit of a transparent layer to it, so you can kind of see the album artwork behind the controls. Finally, you can minimize the controls and continue navigating the app while listening, and you will still have mini controls at the bottom of the screen.

Amazon's curated music is not quite on par with Spotify or Apple Music, but it is getting better, and quickly. It features a My Soundtrack station that is constantly being updated based on your listening habits and preferences, and a My Discovery Mix playlist that is similar to the My New Music Mix on Apple Music.

Amazon Music Unlimited also has a bunch of original playlists like Control Alt Repeat (alternative) and Alexa's Most Requested that are updated weekly and are a lot of fun to listen to, and there are also originals like the Side by Side series which feature interview snippets with top artists interspersed with their favorite tracks. Oh, and right now they have a ton of great Thanksgiving and holiday playlists across the decades and genres. All-in-all a great catalog that continues to get even better.

If you aren't married to a particular streaming music service, and especially if you're an Amazon Prime member, then take a chance on this Black Friday special and try Amazon Music Unlimited. This iPhone listener can definitely vouch for it!

What you need to know

• Streaming service Pandora is overhauling its app today.
• New "For You" tab provides continually updated personal suggestions.
• Also aims to provide easy access to all Pandora's content and programming.

Popular U.S. music streaming service Pandora's mobile app is today getting a substantial overhaul to bring users increased personalization, in a bid to stay competitive in a world dominated by Spotify and Apple Music.

Pandora will today introduce a brand new mobile experience. The main feature is a dedicated "For You" tab, which provides a continuously updating feed of content recommended to users based on personalized factors. Users will receive recommendations for both music and podcasts based on the day of the week, time of day and Pandora's predictions about things like your mood.

In a statement Pandora's Chief Product Officer Chris Phillips said:

"Our listeners have told us that they love the utility of Pandora — it's drop-dead easy, it works, it knows me, It's really simple," explains Pandora's Chief Product Officer, Chris Phillips. "But what they haven't been able to understand and have easy enough access to is all the content and programming that we have available on Pandora — the new content, new programming, and the unique content that you can't get other places,"

Pandora hopes that the new "For You" tab will provide a window to allow users to view the most amount of its content possible. Web feature Pandora modes is also coming to mobile for the first time. This lets you toggle and customize how you experience Pandora Stations to hear certain types of music such as new releases. Inside the For You tab, you can also browse by category, this includes genre, new music, podcasts, moods, playlists, decades and trending.

TechCrunch notes:

In total, there are some 35 different modules in Pandora's new For You feed, some of which are shown to every user while others appear dynamically based on time of day and day of week. Its suggestions will also be tailored to your own likes and interests, thanks to your own listening behavior and explicit signals, like thumbs up and thumbs down.

There's a "Moods & Activities" section, which will let you pick out music to suit your mood, be it a rainy day, a workout or studying to name a few.

Customization and personalization are absolutely key in this new Pandora upgrade. The new version will begin rollout today on iOS and Android and should be made be available for all users over the next few weeks.

Today, Apple launched the latest version of GarageBand for Mac, the company's popular music creation program. However, it's more than just a few bug fixes: GarageBand 10.3 is chock full of awesome new stuff, including free Artist Lessons, new loops, and more.

Sound-wise, GarageBand now features 1,000 (yes, 1,000) new electronic and urban loops overing Reggaeton, Future Bass, and Chill Rap, allowing you to more easily achieve the vibe you're looking for. If you're in the market for more weird sound effects (because, let's face it, there are only so many times you can incorporate the loon), Apple has added 400 new animal, machine, and voice samples. There are also two new Drummers that play in Roots and Jazz-influenced brush styles, and if you prefer to take the drumming into your own hands, you can now play and record using more traditional instruments from China and Japan like the incredibly cool Taiko drum. And, for those of you out there who wanna get real King Crimson with it, there are even five vintage Mellotron patches you can work in.

Arguably, though, the best thing about today's release is that users can get access to GarageBand's entire library of downloadable Artist Lessons for everyone's favorite price: free. If you've never checked them out before, Artist Lessons are tutorials in which the actual artists behind hit songs show you how to play them on piano and guitar, and they used to cost a whopping $4.99 a pop. Now though, you can learn all the intricacies of "Roxanne" from Sting himself without needing to shell out a single dime. Ah, the future.

Apple also noted that 10.3 updates compatibility with the iOS version of GarageBand, as well as providing a few stability improvements.

So, are you ready to be the next vaporwave phenomenon? If so, you can download GarageBand for free (if you don't have it already) by clicking on the link below. If you do already have GarageBand on your Mac, the update is free as well, and should happen automatically unless you have automatic updates disabled.

• GarageBand - Free - Download now

Thoughts?

What do you think of the additions to GarageBand? Share your favorite new features with us in the comments below. And, if you want, send a tweet our way sharing a song you've created using the app!

It's not often you come across really rad smart music accessories, and the Spire Studio is a breath of fresh air and a humongous step in the right direction for the future of mobile recording. Stop recording sloppy demos with your iPhone's microphone and check out the Spire Studio. Just be prepared to fork over some dough (especially in Canada — yikes!).

See at Spire

A studio in the palm of your hands

That's a literal statement. Think of a pack of rewritable CDs you can buy at any electronics store. That's basically the size of the Spire Studio, but the Spire's diameter is even smaller, so it really fits in the palm of your hand. It's magnificent what such a small thing can do. And, you just have to charge it up and you have yourself a cable-free mobile studio, so you can take it to the park or wherever your travels may lead you, and it'll work for 4 to 6 hours, promises iZotope.

You have everything you need to start recording: two rear inputs that double as XLR and quarter-inch jacks (including phantom power for your mics that need it), simple record and play buttons, a "Soundcheck" button, a "New Song" button, and a headphone volume button.

Download the Spire app for iPhone (sorry, Android users, including myself), connect to your Spire via Wi-Fi, and you're ready to go. The best part is that, if you've forgotten your phone, you can just record right to the Spire, and it'll sync up with the app the next time you connect. That's gold, Jerry. Gold.

How it works

The Spire is about as straightforward as you could hope. You quite literally turn it on, and hit record. Or, you turn it on, connect with the app, and hit record. That's really all you need to know to get started. The built-in microphone is excellent. I recorded acoustic guitar, vocals, and even drums, and they all sounded great. Thanks to the magical Soundcheck button, your levels are automatically set — you hit the button, play for 10 seconds, and boom. You can also manually set your levels, which I actually liked a little better for drums, but do what sounds best to you. I was actually very pleasantly surprised by how well the Spire balanced out the drum kit, and there was virtually no clipping — and that's in an echoey, unfinished basement at that.

You'll probably want your own metronome if you want to record to a click track with drums (or an awesome pair of noise-isolating headphones), but other than that, it works well.

You can record up to eight tracks in a single session, so you can lay down drums, then plug in headphones to lay down guitar and bass, and then do up your vocals. I like recording acoustic guitar and vocals the best. Hit the soundcheck button, play and sing a bit together, and it ends up perfectly balanced — it's glorious.

You can add recording effects before you hit record to change the shape of your sound, and if you're plugging electric guitars in directly, you have your choice of a couple amps, where can alter tremolo, reverb, brightness, and other cool settings.

The "Acoustic Shaper" effect is pretty awesome, adding a lovely, almost haunting reverb, which you can crank or turn down to your pleasure. I did a quick cover of "Ache With Me" by Against Me! and was able to get that cool, reverby "ch-ah" breath sound with it. It's cool enough when you can record your own rough songs ideas on the fly, but when you can do covers and actually full-on emulate recordings, that's rad as hell.

Electric guitar is a bit of a sticking point for me when it comes to the Spire. I first tried with my Epiphone ES-339, which has two humbucking pickups, and even clean it was too much for the Spire (even after using the Soundcheck setting). It was a little overblown and distorted.

I then tried my American Standard Strat, which has humbuckers on the bridge, and clean was gorgeous, even with the tone switch in fourth position, and I even added the Hot Tubes side of my EHX Hot Wax overdrive pedal, and that wasn't too bad, but once I kicked in the Crayon side and added more distortion, the signal was fully distorted. I also tried to get a dirty sound with my Super Badass distrotion from Dunlop, and that signal was also overblown, even after soundchecking and turning down the volume knob on my strat.

So I'd say stick with delay, trem, and other non-distorting effects pedals if you don't want a muddy tone. Or, even better, just plug in a microphone and mic your amp instead.

A solid app with a couple caveats

The Spire app is wonderfully straightforward and makes excellent use of 3D Touch. When you're trimming a track, if you firmly press the slider, it'll play the part of the track you're at, so you can trim with precision. The only downside is that you can't slide the tracks at all, so if you're recording multiple tracks, you'll want to get things perfectly in time (where the metronome feature comes in handy!).

The other minor annoyance is the inability to listen to audio from your iPhone when you're recording with the Spire unit itself. Say you'd rather lay down drums after your record guitars — you'd have to plug headphones into the Spire unit in order to hear playback. It can be done; it's just a little cumbersome.

The Mix section is really cool, since you can mix each track the way you'd like it, and even set the fade right or left. You just can't adjust the mix for certain parts of each track; you set the level for a particular track, and that's how it's set for the whole song. That being said, if you export individual tracks to another program, you can adjust them there. The Spire is really about just getting your ideas down to turn them into perfection later on.

Sharing is caring and easy as pie

One of the best features of the Spire Studio is just how easy it is to share your recorded projects. You can simply AirDrop your stuff right from the iPhone app to your Mac, which is ridiculously convenient, or you can email files, send them as texts, send 'em straight to social media or SoundCloud, and even export the individual tracks to work on them after in GarageBand or wherever you like to tweak your music. That makes the the Spire the perfect demo tool.

Celebrity endorsements

I don't usually care to much when a celebrity hypes a product — they're usually paid quite well, and I don't tend to trust anyone's opinion when money's involved.

That being said, one of my absolute favorite musicians (Laura Jane Grace of Against Me!) recorded a fun song using a Spire Studio, and I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me want a Spire of my own just a little bit. Check out "Park Life Forever" in Spire's video below. It's a fun behind-the-scenes look at Laura Jane recording using the Spire, while chatting about the tune's inspiration. "Park Life Forever" is a far cry from "Baby, I'm an Anarchist," but it's a cute, happy way to showcase the Spire's spur-of-the-moment spirit.

And here's the full making of video, where you can watch Grace record the whole tune:

If that's not the most wholesome thing you've seen today, then I don't know what is.

How much?

For $349 US, you get a full-on studio that fits in your backpack. Edit on the fly, record, effects, the works. The app is free to download as well. It just sucks living in Canada right now, where this thing costs me upwards of $500. I feel like that's a bit of a tall order, but if you're a serious musician, then it's likely worth it to you.

Should you buy it? Hell yes

The longer I play with the Spire Studio, the more I absolutely love it. It's incredibly convenient when you have a random idea for a tune and you can just go grab it, pick up an acoustic guitar, and lay it down on the fly. No need to plug it in (provided it's charged), no need to turn on a computer, hell no need to even pick up your phone if you don't want to add any effects or anything. Just soundcheck, play, boom.

If you want a super convenient way to do up demos and even create full songs, with built-in effects, mixing, and more, then yes, you should pick up a Spire Studio for yourself. It's convenient, multi-faceted, and just as great as you'd hope.

See at Spire

Apple Music debuted a new set of social features alongside the launch of iOS 11, which allow you to more easily share the music you love with other Apple Music users. When you first set up your profile, maybe you decided to share everything with anyone who wanted to follow you, but now some time has passed and you've grown a bit more selective. Apple Music has a couple of options for making your account more private.

Here's how you control the privacy of your Apple Music account.

• How to make your Apple Music account private
• How to keep your Apple Music listening history private

How to make your Apple Music account private

These steps allow you to share what music you're listening to and the playlists you've created, but only with people that you specifically choose.

1. Open Apple Music.
2. Tap For You.
3. Tap your avatar in the upper-right corner.

4. Tap Edit.
5. Tap People You Approve under Who Can Follow Your Activity.
6. Tap Done.

How to keep your Apple Music listening history private

This option lets you share your personal playlists and view the music other people have been listening to without exposing your own listening habits to others.

1. Open Apple Music.
2. Tap For You.
3. Tap your avatar in the upper right corner.

4. Tap Edit.
5. Flip the Listening To switch to the 'off' position.
6. Tap Done.

Questions

If you've got any other questions about the privacy of your Apple Music account, put them in the comments.

Don't ask me why it's this way, but if you're paying for Tidal with your iTunes Account, you're spending too much money. No, really, you are. I promise. You'll save 30% on your subscription by paying for it by other means.

If you sign up for Tidal on the web or in, say, the Android app then you'll see the price of $19.99 for the HiFi subscription plan. Let's face it, if you're using Tidal at all, this is probably why. But, if you should happen to sign up using your iPhone or iPad, then that price goes up.

In the UK it costs £25.99 a month through iTunes. £6 more. I assume the same can be said of U.S.-based customers. It's the easiest way to subscribe and enjoy Tidal, but it's literally throwing your money down the toilet.

When you sign up, you get the first 30 days free anyway, so you have time to figure it out. Tidal doesn't even hide the fact you can pay less, happily telling you on its website that if you pay with a credit card or PayPal you'll save money.

Here's how you make the switch.

1. Log in to your Tidal account on the Tidal website.
2. Select payment from the menu on the right side of the screen. You'll see the image above.
3. Select the new payment option and add your details.

You'll have to cancel your current subscription in iTunes yourself; otherwise, you can and probably will be charged twice. If you need an assist on that, hit the link below for our full guide.

How to cancel an App Store subscription

Assuming you've done this before any Apple-made payments are taken, you won't have to worry and you'll only be paying the proper rate of $19.99.

Download Tidal at the App Store

Canceling or changing your Pandora Premium subscription is simple: It just depends on where you subscribed.

How to cancel your Pandora Premium subscription on iPhone or iPad

If you directly subscribed to Premium through the Pandora app, you'll need to cancel it via your Apple ID's subscriptions section.

Fun fact: You can cancel Premium immediately after signing up for a free trial so that you don't get billed at the higher $12.99 rate after your month is up, but you'll still be able to use it free for the next thirty days.

1. Open the iTunes app on your iPhone.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and tap the Apple ID button.
3. Select View Apple ID.
4. Enter your Apple ID password or authorize with Touch ID.
5. Tap the Subscriptions button.

6. Tap Pandora.
7. Press Cancel Subscription.
8. Tap Confirm.

How to cancel Pandora Premium on the web

If you subscribed online, you'll need to visit Pandora's website to cancel.

1. Open Pandora.com.
2. Sign in to your account.
3. Click on your profile picture in the upper right corner.
4. Select Settings.

5. Click on Subscription.
6. Press Cancel Subscription
7. Save Changes and enter your password, if prompted.Note: If you can't follow steps 6-7, you're likely subscribed to Premium from a different vendor (Apple, Roku, Android, Amazon). You'll need to visit them directly to cancel.

Questions?

Still having trouble canceling? Let us know below.

In just a couple of hours, Americans will make history by officially electing their very first woman for president, or a living, breathing tangerine man (kidding, that was a joke. Good luck, Donald!).

If you don't have cable, don't fret! There are plenty of options online to consider. Here's a list of the best places to catch the play-by-play of this monumental event.

• Live Right Now
• Youtube Streams
• Stream with Apple TV
• Best Apps for Streaming
• Interactive Election Maps
• Clinton-specific Streams
• Trump-specific Streams

Live Right Now

Jump into the #electionaction right away with news sources like Reuters TV, CBS, and Politico. These live feeds will keep you up to date on all the latest information and should be continuously streaming content throughout the day.

• Reuters TV
• CBS
• Politico

YouTube Streams

Most of these YouTube streams won't start until a bit later, so we let you know the specific times for each one. YouTube streams are great because you can play them on your iPhone, iPad, MacBook — wherever! Here are a couple of streams starting later from NBC, ABC, Bloomberg Politics, PBS, and even MTV.

Stream with Apple TV

CBS, ABC, CNBC, PBS, and CNNgo all have streaming options available for your Apple TV, but by using the Twitter livestream, you can easily watch the election with your Apple TV, too!

Best Apps for Streaming

It even keeps streaming when you lock your iPhone so you never miss a moment!

Interactive Election Maps

Interactive election maps are really great tools to keep yourself up-to-date with voting and information as it comes in in real-time. Check out CNN, Politico, and 260 To Win's maps for a little more hands-on election coverage!

• CNN
• 260 To Win
• Politico

Clinton-specific Streams

Hoping Hillary Clinton makes history as the first female president ever? Then watch her specific watch party here!

Trump-specific Streams

Rooting for Donald Trump to make America great again? Then check out his watch party from Fox News here!

What's your pick?

Is there a way you've been watching the election that we haven't mentioned? Let us know in the comments below!

You can add more tracks and instruments to your Music Memos by sending them directly to GarageBand or Logic Pro X. You can also share tracks with friends through email or upload them to your iTunes library, SoundCloud, and YouTube. Just follow these simple steps.

How to export tracks to GarageBand, SoundCloud, and YouTube in Music Memos for iPhone

Apple made it easy to send your song ideas directly to more robust music editing apps, like GarageBand. You can also share your Music Memos to the world via SoundCloud and YouTube.

1. Tap the File icon at the top center of the screen, or swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
2. Tap on the track you want to export.
3. Tap the track again.

4. Tap the Share icon in the upper right corner of the screen. This will open the share sheet at the bottom of the screen.
5. Swipe through the upper row of app icons until you see the one you wish to use.
6. Tap the app icon to export your track and open that app.

Once the app is opened, you can proceed with the action you wish, like adding tracks in GarageBand, adding a summary in SoundCloud, or making a video clip in YouTube.

How to save tracks to Dropbox, iTunes library, and iCloud Drive in Music Memos for iPhone

You can save tracks to a variety of cloud storage services in order to access them from anywhere, including your Mac so you can further edit them with professional mixing programs like Logic Pro X.

1. Tap the File icon at the top center of the screen, or swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
2. Tap on the track you want to export.
3. Tap the track again.

4. Tap the Share icon in the upper right corner of the screen. This will open the share sheet at the bottom of the screen.
5. Swipe through the lower row of sharing options (e.g. Save to Dropbox) until you see to where you want to save your track.
6. Tap the app to which you want to save to open it and save the track there.

When your tracks are saved in a cloud storage service, you'll be able to access them from any device at any time.

How to share tracks with with Messages, Email, and more in Music Memos for iPhone

If you simply want to share your song idea with your bandmates or co-writers, you can quickly do so using the content sharing feature in iOS. Share with such third-party apps as Slack, Messenger, and various email clients.

1. Tap the File icon at the top center of the screen, or swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
2. Select the track you want to share.
3. Tap the track again.

4. Tap the Share icon in the upper right corner of the screen. This will open the share sheet at the bottom of the screen.
5. Drag your finger across top row of app icons until you see the one you wish to use.
6. Tap the app icon to open it and share your track with others.

Apple's Music Memos app is a great tool for recording song ideas with just a tap. However, it is more than just a recording app — it's a surprisingly capable editing tool. The editing features are easy to use once you know where they are. Here's how.

How to add drum and bass to tracks in Music Memos on iPhone

You can add simple drum and bass backing to new tracks in Music Memos. This gives your song ideas a bit more structure so you can hear what it would sound like with a full band.

1. Tap the File icon at the top center of the screen, or swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
2. Select a track.
3. Tap the Bass icon directly below the track.
4. To change the bass style, hold down the icon to call up the adjustment tools.
5. Choose Electric or Upright.
6. Drag your finger on the pad to adjust the style between Simple, Complex, Quiet, and Loud.

7. Tap the Drum icon directly below the track.
8. To change the drum style, hold down the icon to call up the adjustment tools.
9. Choose Modern Kit or Vintage Kit.
10. Drag your finger on the pad to adjust the style between Simple, Complex, Quiet, and Loud.
11. Select the Hi-Hats, Ride, or Tom to change the drum beat sound.

The virtual bass player and drummer don't always sync perfectly with your song. However, you can edit the chords and adjust the time signature and tempo of tracks.

How to edit a track in Music Memos on iPhone

Music Memos provides a number of useful editing tools to better perfect the sound you are going for.

1. Tap the File icon at the top center of the screen, or swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
2. Select a track.
3. Tap the track again.
4. Tap the Time icon in the upper left corner of the screen.
5. Select the adjustment you wish to change in each category.For the tempo, you can switch to Half, Regular, or Double. For the time signature, you can change to 3/4 time, 4/4 time, or 6/8 time. For the downbeat, you can adjust it up or down in increments of one beat from zero to 7/8 by tapping the arrows.
6. Press Play to hear back the edit.
7. Make new time adjustments as necessary until the rhythm of the drum fits with your track.

1. Tap the File icon at the top center of the screen, or swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
2. Select a track.
3. Tap the track again.
4. Tap the Chord icon next to the Time icon.
5. Tap on the chord you wish to change.Chords are displayed on the track in sections labeled by what Music Memos thinks the appropriate chord should be (like E, Gm, D#, etc.).
6. Tap the chord you wish to change it to (or, select No Chord or No Band if you don't want a backing track here).
7. Make new chord adjustments as necessary until the virtual bass player plays the notes you want it to play.
8. Press Play to hear back the edit.

1. Tap the File icon at the top center of the screen, or swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
2. Select a track.
3. Tap the track again.
4. Tap the Trim icon in the upper center of the screen.
5. Drag the red trim handle at the beginning of the track to where you want it to start.
6. Drag the red trim handle at the end of the track to where you want it to end.
7. Tap the red Trim banner at the bottom of the screen
8. Tap "Save as new idea" when prompted. This will make a copy of the original track.
9. Press Play to hear back the edit.

1. Tap the File icon at the top center of the screen, or swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
2. Select a track.
3. Tap the track again.
4. Tap the Note icon next to the Trim icon.
5. Tap Capo to identify the capo position.
6. Tap Tuning to identify the guitar tuning.
7. Tap the memo field to add any personal notes, like lyrics or adding instruments.
8. Tap Done to go back to the editing screen.

By editing a track, it will be easier to share it with others or send it to a more robust music editing app, like Garage Band or Final Cut Pro X.

Once you start building up a library of song ideas into the dozens in Music Memos, it gets harder to find what you are looking for. Apple added a few organizing features that makes tracks searchable. Tag and rate tracks as you edit them. We'll show you how.

How to rate songs in Music Memos on iPhone

The song rating feature makes it easier to filter tracks when you are searching for them later on.

1. Tap the File icon at the top center of the screen or swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
2. Tap the Star icon in the upper right corner of the selected track.
3. A ratings window will pop up; tap the star rating you wish to add. You can now narrow your search by using the star rating filter.

How to add tags in Music Memos on iPhone

Tags are the best way to organize tracks for searching purposes. You can use the premade tags or create your own. I added the names of my two bands to help separate content when I'm looking for a song.

1. Tap the File icon at the top center of the screen or swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
2. Select a track.
3. Tap the Tag icon in the lower left corner of the selected track.
4. Select a tag.

5. To add a custom tag, tap in the "Search or add a new tag" the text field at the top of the screen.
6. Type in the new tag.
7. Tap "Add 'X' tag" (where X is the name of the tag) just below the text field.Once tags and star ratings are in place, you can quickly search for a specific track.

How to search for tracks in Music Memos on iPhone

With a few dozen song ideas in your library, scrolling down the list is going to get annoying. Use the search feature to narrow down your choices.

1. Tap the File icon at the top center of the screen, or swipe up from the bottom of the screen.
2. Pull down on the track screen until you see the Search Field.
3. Tap the Search Field.
4. Enter a tag or song title in the Search Field.
5. Drag the Filter Bar to the right to exclude lower star rating tracks, or to the left to include them.As long as you've tagged and rated tracks, finding what you are looking for in a search is much easier.

Inspiration comes at a moment's notice and sometimes a napkin is just not going to cut it. Music Memos makes it possible for you to get your song ideas recorded with a simple tap, not unlike recording audio in the Voice Memos app, but with special features for the musically-inclined and the ability to easily share the files in a variety of third-party apps. Getting started with Music Memos is simple. Here's how!

How to get Music Memos onto your iPhone

Music Memos is made by Apple but it doesn't come pre-installed on your iPhone. So, before you can start using it, you need to download Music Memos from the App Store.

• Free - Download now

How to set up iCloud and turn on iCloud Drive for Music Memos on iPhone

Apple's iCloud makes it possible for you save content from your various devices in, well, the cloud, including everything you create in Music Memos. If you haven't already enabled iCloud, don't worry — you can enable it at any time in the Settings app.

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Scroll down the list and tap iCloud.
3. Enter your Apple ID and password.
4. Tap Sign In.
5. If you already have Safari data, reminders, contacts, and calendars on your iPhone, you can merge them with iCloud. When prompted, tap Merge.

6. While still in the iCloud settings, scroll down and tap on iCloud Drive.
7. Toggle the switch to the On position.

When you open the iCloud Drive app, or log in via a Web browser, all of your recorded ideas will already be there waiting for you.

How to use the tuner in Music Memos on iPhone

Before recording a song, you'll want to make sure that your guitar, ukulele, or other instrument is in tune and ready to rock. Luckily, Apple included a tuning feature inside Music Memos that is easy to use and works great.

Note: You will need to know the note for each of your strings; to make the tuner useful for as many instruments as possible, Apple doesn't provide you with the proper notes to tune to, only whether your instrument's string is in tune on that note.

1. Tap the Tuning Fork icon.
2. Pluck a string on your guitar, uke, or other instrument.
3. Adjust your string's tuning based on the note identification. Too sharp will show a red bar to the right of the note. Too flat will show a red bar to the left of the note.

When the bar is perfectly centered and glowing blue, you're in tune.

How to record a Music Memo on iPhone

This is what makes Music Memos so great: All you have to do is tap the big button in the center of the screen to start recording. You can either just hum notes in order to capture a riff, or, if you have a guitar, bass, or even clarinet on hand, grab your instrument and start playing.

1. Open Music Memos app.
2. Tap the big blue button in the center of the screen. The Music Memos color scheme will turn red and recording will begin.
3. Play your riff, chorus, solo, or whatever inspiration has just hit you.
4. To stop recording, tap the big red button.

How to automatically record Music Memos on iPhone

The Auto Record feature is probably the best feature in Music Memos. It identifies when you've started playing and automatically begins recording. When you stop playing, it automatically stops recording.

1. Open Music Memos app.
2. Tap the Auto icon in the upper left corner of the screen.
3. Start playing music. The screen will turn red and Music Memos will begin recording automatically.
4. Stop playing music. The screen will stop recording automatically and create a track, then wait for you to begin playing again.

Whenever you stop and start playing again, Music Memos will automatically create new tracks, which are saved separately so you can don't have to scrub through an entire recording to find the part you liked the most. If you want to stop using the Auto Record feature, tap the Auto icon in the upper left corner again.

Questions?

Want to know more about Music Memos? Have a question about what we went over? Let us know in the comments.

For as long as I've had my iPhone, I've used Apple's built-in Voice Memos app to record my song ideas, collecting iterations of a riff or melody I don't want to forget. But Voice Memos is clunky, has no built-in organizational system, and the editing tools are borderline nonexistent.

For me, the songwriting process usually goes something like this: I sit down with an acoustic guitar and play around until I stumble upon something I like. Then I play it on a loop, letting myself get comfortable enough to twist it around and see how it works with other notes and different voicing. Once I can hear a song in the noise, I'll start singing gibberish lyrics until I come up with a vocal melody that works.

Then I record it, over and over, in Voice Memos.

That's kind of a problem; I see "New Recording 233" and I sigh. Sure, I could have given the clip a real name, but why bother? I have hundreds upon hundreds of clips, with no way to search or filter them. I occasionally go spelunking in the Voice Memos table view list to discover long-forgotten ideas that I really wish I'd taken the time to flesh out. My entire musical idea system is a ghetto.

Enter Music Memos

Conversely, Music Memos offers so many ways of organizing my clips that I'm finding myself recording more just because I can. As I progress through a song I can tag the recordings with the song's name, ensuring that a search for "Elevators" will return all of the clips I recorded for that song. Each recording also gets a name and a star rating, so I can keep everything, refer to earlier recordings if needed, and no longer rely on date-based grouping to keep it all together, or wonder which if the ten clips in the group was the one I liked most.

If Voice Memos are Post-Its — a quick and dirty tool to make sure I didn't forget an idea — then Music Memos is a sketchbook. This is where I start the songwriting process, and every part of the app is designed to help facilitate the process and, most shockingly of all, guide me to the next step in fleshing the song out.

This level of organization also makes me want to start recording practice sessions and charting progress. Having that much raw material available and easily searchable also means more clips we can share on Connect, more early listens we can share with our Patreon supporters, and more options for comparison and background content for our podcast. That's a whole lot of upside for one feature.

Music Memos has so many other tricks up its sleeves that I almost feel like someone at Apple has been reading my dream journal. An app for recording song ideas that uses a robust tagging system is something I've personally wanted to build for a long time, but throw in a guitar tuner, chord and tempo detection, exporting to GarageBand, and magical automatic backing instruments, and the dream becomes borderline pornographic.

My experience with the chord detection feature has been mixed, with me watching the app struggle to average out the chords I play with the notes I'm singing. I had the idea to try using it for something else: I've been writing a new song, starting with just a vocal melody. Because I'm a self-taught musician with only an intuitive understanding of music theory, this gets a little tricky. Rather that spending time working out what the chords should be, I decided to just sing the melody into Music Memos and see what it suggested.

This is obviously a bit of a mess, but that's perfectly okay for my purposes. Playing exactly the chords of the vocal melody would be really boring (and on guitar, hard to pull of), but this gives me a great view of the chord set I should be working from. From here, I can start singing over one or two of these chords and work my way out from there. Music Memos has taken one of the most annoying parts of songwriting and made it fun for me. I really can't overstate how great that feels.

The other major songwriting tool in Music Memos is backing tracks. Record your song the way you normally would, and the app will put drums and/or bass behind it. As with everything else in this app, the controls are dead simple: turn drums on by tapping the drums icon, bass by tapping the bass icon.

On the first few tries, Music Memos was comically bad at figuring out where the drum beats should go. I thought that maybe my strum pattern or songwriting style defied rhythm detection, but a few tweaks with the time editor to set the correct downbeat, and things were more or less okay.

I gave it a second chance with a different song — something new I made up with a more obvious tempo placement — and the results were surprisingly good. A couple of adjustments later and I had a beat and a bass line that I liked. Several hours passed with me recording new ideas riffing on what was supposed to be a test song.

That's not to say it sounded great, but it did sound good enough to keep (and even increase) my momentum. Even just testing the app for this article has generated a new song. I'm hard-pressed to think of a better endorsement for a songwriting app.

Automagic

My other favorite feature is a subtle one: "Auto". With this option turned on (again, via a dead-simple button in the main UI), Music Notes does exactly what you'd expect: it sits and listens, and starts recording automatically when it detects that you're playing a song.

The magic behind this feature is pretty easy to guess: the app listens passively, Siri-style, recording everything, and simply saves the recording starting at the beginning of the waveform. But it's these little details that add up for me. Since many (if not most) of my clips and recordings are full of dead air at the beginning while I pull up a lyric sheet or get my capo set properly, this is a big win for me. Sure, I could edit by hand, but I don't, and I never will.

Taking a step back: while I love the organizational options, the guitar tuner, automatic recording, and the ability to chart my chords right inside the recording, the joy of recording a quick demo is almost overshadowed by how easy it is to escalate.

You can send the song to a friend via email, like before, but you can also send it to GarageBand. Not exactly my cup of tea, but GarageBand files can be opened in Logic Pro X, and at this point things are starting to get really interesting. My quick recordings can blossom into something entirely new and dramatically more sophisticated.

New Post comes up empty. Apparently Connect got distracted and forgot what it was doing.

Or, if I just want to show off a snippet of something I'm playing around with, I can send it off to Apple Music Connect, SoundCloud, or YouTube. I couldn't get Connect sharing to work in my testing — unsurprising if you've ever tried to get Apple Music Connect to do anything — but given Connect's place in the iTunes ecosystem, the day is definitely coming where an artist could write, record, produce, and distribute an entire album using nothing more than their telephone.

Music Memos is less a tool than a toolbox. Each tool works remarkably well for a 1.0 release, and most of them feel like they were designed with my exact needs in mind. The designers could have approached this like recording software, with a series of menus and sub-menus of options, and that would have been more or less fine. But instead Music Memos has the weight and simplicity of spirit of a guitar effect pedal. One button and a handful of dials. Beautiful. My iPhone is only further solidified as an indispensable part of my composing process.

Microphone technology may not be making the same quantum leaps as digital cameras, but putting them to better use is a good start. After all, the best recording studio is the one you have with you.

To my parents' dismay, I am not what you would call a professional musician. They are both 30-year classical veterans, having held the title of classical concert pianist, conductor, voice coach, and a million other little jobs in-between. I... dabble in string instruments and belt musicals in my car.

But when you grow up in a house full of music, you respect it. And though I've never sought to make singing or piano-playing my career, I still love the art of learning a new song, or building a tune from an assortment of random chords.

It's probably why I squealed over Apple's Music Memos, released Wednesday. The iOS app lets you record song snippets, pair them with a simple backing drumkit or bass, and tweak tempos before sharing it to your friends and fans, or sending it to a more pro-level editing suite.

After only an hour with it, I'm pretty confident that it's going to delight true musicians. But for music dabblers like myself, it might actually spur more regular tune creation than you previously thought possible.

Out of a single chord progression doodle in Music Memos, I recorded, produced, and created a song in 30 minutes.

Sing for me

Music Memos isn't quite like any app Apple has made so far: It compares most closely to Voice Memos, of course, but with several music-specific elements that make me wonder if I'll ever use Voice Memos again.

Off the bat, Music Memos's best feature is automatic recording. Tap the Auto button in the upper left corner, and the app will automatically start and stop recording whenever you play or sing a segment. This is something I've longed for in Voice Memos for ages: I've recorded many a 40-minute chord-and-random-lyrics dabble in Apple's older recording app, only to never listen to it because the thought of going through almost an hour of material for 3-4 solid minutes made my head hurt.

With Music Memos, you can dabble away. I played six or seven sets of ukulele chord progressions, and the app intelligently recognized my big pauses as "places to split," and did so seamlessly.

You can mess around a little bit with Music Memos's tagging and backing system on the last clip recorded, but the app's real power comes when you tap the Files icon in the top center. This displays all your clips; tap one, and you get options for time signature, auto-chord recognition, trimming, notes, tagging, automatic instruments, and sharing.

Edit away

To put Music Memos through its paces, I took one of my test ukulele chord progressions—Dm, A, Bb—and called it "Down in the Dismal Deep" (alliteration!). I added both bass and drums to the track by tapping the tiny bass and drumkit icons in the bottom toolbar, and tapped and held on one of the icons to bring up some (limited) customization controls. The drums are limited to two kits—Modern and Vintage—and three styles, with a music square that offers Loud, Complex, Simple, and Quiet beats. The bass is even simpler than that: It lets you choose either Electric or Upright, with the same music square options as the drumkit.

The lilting little uke ditty I put together practically demanded an upright bass, so on it went; I also added a Quiet/Simple Vintage drumkit with a little bit of cymbal action.

After doing this, my little three-chord progression already sounded like something of a song, but there were many more options to play with from here. You can adjust the tempo of the song (and AI instruments) from Half, Regular, to Double; the original "Regular" tempo is however you initially played your snippet. You can also change the time signature from 4/4 to a more artsy 3/4 or even 6/8, and alter the downbeat.

While the AI drumset relies on tempo, the AI bass uses automatic chord generation based on your initial song drabble. Overall, the bass's chord recognition was pretty spot on, though I did have to use the chord alterer in the toolbar to change one Gm to a Dm.

The detailed Music Memos view for individual songs also lets you trim your snippet; add notes about the capo, tuning, or lyrics; and tag it with various pre-made tags or your own custom variations. For my clip, I trimmed a little bit off the start and end of the clip; added a notation in the notes field about "Down in the Dismal Deep" being a blues song of some sort; and tagged it with "Chorus," "Chords," and my own custom "Ukulele" tag.

From here, you can share your song clip to a number of different sources, including AirDrop, Workflow, Slack, Apple Music Connect, iCloud Drive, YouTube, SoundCloud, and more. I did share an early memo directly to SoundCloud, which worked seamlessly after an initial log-in, but for this clip, I wanted to do a bit more editing before having it make a SoundCloud debut.

Unfortunately, one thing you can't do with Music Memos: record additional tracks alongside it, or let a current recording play in the background while you sing or record an additional memo. I would love to see a feature like that in the future; it'd be almost like Final Cut Pro's "Audition" option, and give you the chance to experiment with different vocals.

That said, Apple does offer an app for multitrack recording right on iOS: GarageBand.

Out of the frying pan...

You can edit Music Memos with GarageBand for iPhone, but because I like the bigger screen, I sent my clip via AirDrop to my iPad Pro, where it arrived as a .band GarageBand file. Opening it was as easy as selecting GarageBand as an import option; from there, I had full access to all GarageBand's features.

In GarageBand, I adjusted the volume and start times of the various tracks; added some more ambience to the ukulele track, and recorded two quick vocal tests with nonsense lyrics I dreamed up on the spot. The result: I had a publishable chorus in 30 minutes. It's not a perfectly mixed tune, nor is it particularly high art. But it's listenable, and moreover: It makes me want to do more with this song when I have a little extra time on my hands.

It's exciting. GarageBand was supposed to be the fiddling musician's answer to iMovie, but as easy as it's gotten over the years, you still have to know some basic music theory and mixing to truly enjoy working in the program. Music Memos, in contrast, offers tools for both the professional musician and the hobbyist tinkerer. Want to record and share a little ditty in 30 minutes? No problem. Want to use it to write a song over six months? You can do that, too.

And that makes this hobbyist musician so happy she could burst into song.

Music Memos, an app straight from Apple that's available on the App Store, was designed to help singers and musicians quickly and easily sketch out their audio ideas on iPhone. It's like Voice Memos, which was introduced with iOS 3, but offers additional features specifically for music.

You start by recording your music through the iPhone's built-in mic. You can record any instrument, and your iPhone will save it in a high-quality, uncompressed file that you can tag, rate, and add to your library. Over time, you can build up a collection of ideas around a single song or group of songs.

Apple showed Music Memos to acclaimed singer, songwriter, and producer Ryan Adams, who had this to say:

Music Memos will also analyze the rhythm and chords of certain instruments, like acoustic guitar and piano, and let you instantly add virtual backing in the form of drums and a bass line that fit right in with your recording. Basic chord notation is also available.

Thanks to iCloud, Music Memos are available in GarageBand for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and Logic Pro X on Mac, so you can take them from ideas, through development, and into finished material. Artists and bands can even share them with fans through Apple Music's Connect.

Music Memos is available for free on the App Store and compatible with iPhone 4s or later and iPad 2 or later.

• Free - Download now

Apple Music doesn't (yet?) integrate lyrics, but if that's something you care about, there's a workaround you can use right now: a widget called Musixmatch. Federico Viticci noticed the functionality and wrote about it on MacStories:

You can get Musixmatch on the App Store, and you can read more about how else Ticci uses it on MacStories.

• Free - Download now

Prime Stations allow you to get ad-free radio stations with your Prime subscription with unlimited skips. You can also now get personalized recommendations for Prime songs and more. Check out the list below to see all of the changes in Amazon Music 4.0:

• Introducing ad-free Prime Stations with unlimited skips
• Personalized recommendations on Prime songs, albums, and playlists
• New design for easier browsing of Prime Music and your library
• Simplified navigation and faster performance

Amazon Music 4.0 is available from the App Store now.

• Free - Download Now

Aria is a jailbreak tweak for iOS that makes the iOS 7 Music app really come to life. Not only can you tweak and customize views, Aria also adds the ability to queue music just like you can in iTunes!

A lot of people didn't like the stock Music app in iOS 7, which looks to be largely influences by the iPad Music app. Luckily, if you're jailbroken, Aria can help you tweak the Music app to your liking again. Design wise you can change the grid views, change some of the interface colors, and more.

More importantly, Aria adds some functionality that makes the Music app better than ever. For starters you can queue music by holding down on any song and choosing to play it now or queue it for next. As you do this, the songs just line up. You can also choose to shuffle music once albums or a playlist is finished. That way you don't have awkward gaps of silence where you need to go back into the Music app in order to turn something back on.

If you happen to give Aria a try, let me know what you think of it in the comments. If you aren't jailbroken, are any of these features something you'd like to see come to stock iOS? Let me know that too!

• $1.99 - Cydia link

Radio streaming services take the heavy lifting out of finding music to listen to. They differentiate themselves from on-demand streaming music services by taking the work out of curating your own content and playlists. Remember the days where we had favorite radio stations and just tuned into them and listened? That's the experience Pandora, Songza, iTunes Radio, Last.fm, and TuneIn Radio want to put in your pocket. So if you aren't interested in offline downloads and just want to hit play, follow along to figure out which one is right for you.

Quick comparison

Above is a quick comparison of each service and what they have to offer. Keep in mind that this comparison is only looking at radio streaming services and not on-demand ones. If those are what interests you, check out that comparison separately via the following link:

• Spotify vs Beats Music vs Slacker vs Rdio vs Google Play Music: On-demand streaming music service showdown!

Design

iTunes Radio is built into the Music app so love it or hate it, you're stuck with it if you want to use iTunes Radio. It lives in one singular tab which doesn't leave a ton of room for additional functionality. You've got featured stations at the top and your custom built stations at the bottom. Now playing screens only differ by adding like and dislike options. Next up we have Pandora whose design hasn't changed drastically in a long time. That's not a bad thing though if you like minimalistic. It's easy enough to figure out and navigate with very few frills.

TuneIn Radio Pro is simple enough to navigate and uses sideways scrolling featured sections to recommend stations it thinks you'd enjoy. The exploration section of TuneIn Radio is one of the best I've seen. Categories are descriptive and actually contain what they say they do. While the design isn't anything over the top, it doesn't hurt your eyes and makes sense in each menu. This is something Last.fm's Scrobbler app struggles to do. Fonts and icons are overdone and too large creating a lot of wasted space. It's functional, but not pretty to look at.

That brings us to Songza, which is the best designed app of the bunch. From the concierge service to searching for carefully curated playlists, the app is well done. If you're running iOS 7 it also supports swipe gestures which make an already beautiful app even more enjoyable to use.

When it comes to design, Songza wins hands down.

Curation

If you want radio, curation is the most important aspect of getting songs you actually want to hear. Theoretically Last.fm should be best at this since it literally looks at all the things you already own in your iTunes library, pulls them in, and plays things based on what you already listen to. While it does a decent job, it isn't the best of the bunch. Pandora does a decent job but in my experience, I hear a lot of duplicates in more obscure genres. A lot of this could be due to their smaller catalog size.

TuneIn Radio does a great job of separating out categories and genres and serves up a great mix but since it's based on live radio for the most part, you're at the mercy of the station. One bonus of TuneIn that a lot of others don't have is the ability to record live radio for playback later. It isn't on-demand by any means but it's a nice option to have. It does however require the Pro version of the app.

Songza's main focus is curation and it shows. The playlists are hand picked and regardless what you listen to, you'll find something. iTunes Radio does a decent job as well but just like Pandora, after a certain amount of time I start hearing the same tracks over and over again. I think the problem here is less a curation one and more a playlist one. If I tweak the playlist slightly or change setting, it changes up the selection. In my mind that sounds more like an issue or bug than a lack of music to play.

Regardless, the only service I can press play on and walk away from for hours is Songza. It really is that damned good at curation.

Specialty stations

If listening to things like comedy shows and sporting events is important to you, TuneIn Radio Pro is a must have. None of the other options give you the live stations and local options that TuneIn does. At its core it really is the traditional radio experience we've all grown up with in your pocket. That means anything you could flip your dial to will most likely be available in TuneIn.

For live events and live radio stations from all over the globe, there's none that can top TuneIn Radio.

Catalog size and selection

TuneIn Radio is different from the others since it's based on live radio and not an actual catalog. On the plus side, that means the TuneIn database is constantly changing. For people that don't like listening to the same thing consistently, it's like a breath of fresh air all the time. Not a bad thing in my opinion. As long as you stay away from local stations that is, which we all know play the same thing over and over. And over again.

Pandora has the smallest catalog size but that doesn't mean it isn't well suited for some people. Most tracks in Pandora are mainstream so if that's your thing, you probably won't notice the small size. Now if you listen to more obscure music, you'll notice fairly quickly. Last.fm comes in next with around 12 million tracks in their catalog. I hear a lot less repeats than I do with Pandora but they're still noticeable after spending a good amount of time with the service.

iTunes Radio pulls from iTunes which has a massive collection of over 25 million tracks. I'm not sure if all of those are up for grabs on iTunes Radio or not but for the most part, iTunes Radio plays things you want to hear. Even though Apple killed Ping a while back, I'm sure they pulled a lot of valuable data about listening habits from it. And I'm almost positive that data has a home in iTunes Radio. My only issue is that after listening to the same playlist a few times I start hearing duplicates rather quickly. It can't be due to a lack of selection and I hope it's something Apple addresses in the near future. For now, tweaking the playlist slightly seems to solve the problem.

Songza has a library of around 20 million tracks which is on-par with what on-demand streaming services such as Rdio, Spotify, and Beats Music offer. No matter what genres you listen to or how obscure they are, you'll find playlists in Songza's catalog that suit your tastes.

Songza slides in for the win just ahead of TuneIn Radio.

Availability

Radio streaming services are a little harder to peg for availability than on-demand streaming services are. From what I could find, there are workarounds for some of them but official availability is pretty limited and varies greatly depending on country.

TuneIn Radio is available in the most countries so that puts it on top. Just be aware that what stations are available will heavily depend on where you are in the world.

Pricing

All five services offer ad supported streaming for free. You're limited to the amount of skips under free plans though. Last.fm limits some other features like profile views and access on mobile apps as well unless you're a premium subscriber. iTunes Radio is the cheapest subscription based option coming in at $25 a year for ad free listening. TuneIn Radio makes both a free and a pro app. If you buy the pro version you get the ability to record live streaming but it's still ad supported, and there's no way to remove them since there's no monthly subscription to be had.

If you're looking at price, iTunes Radio is the cheapest where subscriptions are concerned but TuneIn Radio Pro is the cheapest overall to unlock all features, but you'll still be served up ads from each station.

Which one is best for you?

Regardless what your tastes are, radio streaming services are not created equal. Pandora and Last.fm are lacking enough that I can't recommend either of them. From there the decision gets a little more difficult.

iTunes Radio is a great service that offers a great value but still has a few issues like duplicates, which I don't quite understand given the size of the iTunes catalog.

That leaves us with TuneIn Radio and Songza.

If you need live stations that cover all the bases, including comedy and sports, get TuneIn Radio. If music is your concern, you need Songza. It's the best music curation service currently available and I seriously can't think of any reason to recommend any other service if music is your number one priority.

• Songza - Free - Download Now
• Pandora - Free - Download Now
• iTunes Radio - built into the iOS Music app
• TuneIn Radio Pro - $3.99 - Download Now
• Last.fm Scrobbler - Free - Download Now

What service did you pick?

If you prefer streaming radio over on-demand streaming, which service do use and why? Does any of the above information have you contemplating switching services? Let us know in the comments!

Musi for iPhone is a streaming music app that lets you build a music library that costs you literally nothing, with the help of YouTube. When you search through Musi, it's basically like searching YouTube for music. The only difference is that Musi only streams the audio portion.

You can start by searching for your favorite artists and adding the tracks you like. They are then added to your main library. From there you can sort songs into playlists however you'd like. Playlists are unlimited so you can create and manage them however you want. For many people, this may be a way to create albums. This is the only downside of Musi. Since it's simply searching YouTube for tracks, you need to add tracks one by one. It's not a huge deal if you don't mind creating playlists for artists or aren't the type of person that downloads entire albums anyways.

Musi also has support for AirPlay so you can stream anything you want to any AirPlay enabled device. Along with that you get background streaming as well so you can close out the app and continue doing something else while Musi continues to serve up tracks in the background.

Obviously Musi isn't an all-in-one music solution since it won't work if you don't have an internet connection, but it's a super convenient ones for folks like me who are finicky with music. I have a nasty habit of only listening to things for a few weeks and then never really returning to them again. For stuff like that, Musi is perfect since I'm not spending money on songs and tracks I won't even want to listen to in a few weeks.

If you give Musi a try, let us know what you think of it in the comments! Could you see yourself using it for music discovery and then only purchasing the albums and tracks you want to keep forever?

• Free - Download Now

Good news for Google using folks and music fans in Germany, Mountain View has finally made Google Play Music All Access available there. While the iPhone version may have only just joined us, Germany has been waiting about four months since the service first landed on European shores.

As with other locations, All Access is Germany comes with a free 30-day trial, and to tempt folks to get on board a special reduced subscription rate of €7.99 is in effect if you sign up before January 15. After that, it's back up to the regular price of €9.99.

And if you're reading this, there's a good chance you'll need the application as well, so we've got you covered with a handy download link below. If you're in Germany and signing up for the first time, jump into the comments and let us know how you find it.

• Google Play Music for iPhone review
• Free - Download Now

Source: Google via Android Central

After the longest "few weeks" in history – 24 to be precise – Google FINALLY released Google Play Music for iPhone. With little in the way of explanation for why it took so long, many of us gave up waiting and took our music needs elsewhere. Sure, there are some excellent third-party Google Music clients already available on iOS, but for something such as this you need an official client for the platform in order to take it seriously.

So, it's here, but is it any good, and was it worth the wait? Let's find out.

What is Google Play Music?

Google Play Music is actually a combination of things. It started out as a music store paired with a cloud locker that holds 20,000 of your songs completely free of charge. Sort of iTunes Match-esque, Google Play Music will also scan your library and if what you have is in their catalog, it gets added with no upload. Anything you purchase from Google doesn't count towards your storage limit. So, buy everything from them and your collection will grow and your locker will maintain plenty of free space.

Now, Google Play Music is the above, plus a full featured music streaming service a la Spotify. You can search for and stream albums from Google's vast content library and create custom radio stations to suit your tastes. So it also has an iTunes Radio type component to it, but for any of this you're required to pay $9.99 a month with a full months free trial.

There is no native client for Mac or Windows to play your music, instead you're required to use the Google Play Music web player, which is OK, if sometimes a little janky. There is an app for Mac and Windows however that will scan your music libraries on your computer and automatically upload new content to your cloud locker.

• Download Now: Google Play Music uploader for Mac and Windows

The interface - no iOS 7 here

If you're a user of any of Google's other iOS applications then you'll feel immediately at home with this. It's attractive to look at, and very distinctively Google. The white cards on light gray background is clean and crisp with the Google Play Music signature orange highlights adding just the right splash of color. It's basically a carbon copy of Google's own Android app, and it's so incredibly silky smooth to navigate around. The sliding motion of the menu coming out from the side, the player view minimising, general scrolling up-and-down and side-to-side is all without flaw. I actually think it performs slightly better than the Android version. But it isn't the only Google app that could be said of.

The only real gripe – especially for an app launching in November – is that there isn't a single trace of iOS 7. Searching for music and seeing the iOS 6 keyboard brings about a sigh. We've been waiting what seems like forever for this app, so full integration with the latest iOS software isn't too much to ask for, is it?

It's also still a little jarring – as with other Google apps – that none of the iOS 7 gesture controls are carried into the app. The swipe from the left to go back a step motion that is now engrained into our very DNA isn't anywhere to be found. Do it and instead you'll always be presented with Google's slide out menu. It's not that it isn't a beautifully designed and crafted application, because it is, but a little more implementation of some platform basics wouldn't go amiss.

There's also no dedicated iPad app either. That's a definite disappointment, especially considering how long we've been waiting for any app at all. Of course, you can run the phone app on your iPad, but it's just not the same, is it.

Play Music - My library

My library is where you'll find everything, absolutely everything. All the music you've uploaded to your cloud locker is thrown in with anything you've added from the All Access library. Everything streams in the same way, so there's absolutely no need to differentiate what is yours and what isn't. Consider it Google's version of your iTunes library; it's all there and you can get at it any time you want.

Play Music - Radio

As with iTunes Radio, Google's implementation lets you create stations based on a particular artist, song or album. You search for something you like, then Google will collate a continuous stream of music it thinks you're going to like. Because you're paying for a subscription too, you can skip ahead as many times as you like. Basic, but functional.

What Play Music's Radio feature lacks is any kind of genre specific choices. You're literally limited to creating stations by specific parameters you search for. There's no choice to just pick a Country Music channel for example. Disappointing for some.

Play Music - Explore

Explore is where you conduct your business as part of your All Access subscription. As such, you won't see this option in the slide out menu if you're just using the free cloud storage aspect. It's very similar to something like Spotify, where the first thing you see is a bunch of new and recommended content. It's also where you can search for specific artists, songs and albums you want to hear from Google's massive music collection.

Once you find what you're looking for, tap on the "my library" button to add it to your own library and you'll never need to look for it again. Again, there's nothing surprising here, and the only real critcism would be that – at least here in the UK – the new releases and recommended content is a little thin on the ground.

There are also tabs in the main menu for "Listen Now" and "Playlists." Both do exactly what you'd expect them to; Listen Now serves up some suggestions to just jump in and listen to your music, and Playlists displays your, well, created playlists. Simple.

Offline music

Simply put, anything you have available in your library – be it your own music or All Access music – can be pinned for offline listening. You select the album you want, and somewhere about half way down is a small, round icon with a downward pointing arrow in it. Tap this and the whole album will be downloaded to your iPhone to listen to without a cellular connection.

What would have been nice is an option to offline individual tracks only. As it is right now you can't do that; it's the whole album or nothing at all.

Another use for your Chromecast

Chromecast is pretty limited still across the board, but more so here on iOS with less of Google's own apps available to use with it. Play Music is integrated with Chromecast, and as with all other supported apps is connected with a single tap. Whenever there is a Chromecast dongle powered on within range, you'll see the standard Chromecast icon on the screen, and tapping on it brings up a list – if you have more than one – of which one you want to send your content to.

Your music then plays through your TV, accompanied by some pretty great looking album art which moves about the screen as you're listening. Very much like doing the same with your iTunes music on your iPhone and using AirPlay to send it to Apple TV. But of course, if you're in Google's ecosystem, Chromecast is much, much less expensive. Though still a U.S. exclusive at this point.

No in-app purchases or subscriptions

This is of course not Google's fault alone, more so that Google doesn't want to give Apple a cut of their in-app purchases. As such, you cannot subscribe to All Access or buy tracks or albums from within this app. The same is also present in the Android app, but the difference there is that Google can ping you straight into the Google Play Store app to conduct your purchases. On iOS this is not possible.

As such, the overall experience is a little more jarring than it is on Android. You have to use a browser to search for and buy music, and to sign up for an All Access subscription. And on the iPhone and iPad Google has a habit of sending you into a web app for the music player when you go to the Play Music site, and frustration ensues. So you're better off doing it on your computer. As I said, it isn't all Google's fault, but to the average consumer it's still a frustration to be endured.

The good

• Beautifully designed application
• Extremely smooth and snappy to use
• The might of Google's music library now (officially) on your iPhone
• Pinning music for offline listening
• Single sign-in compatible - if you're signed in to selected other Google apps you don't have to enter your credentials
• Google Chromecast integration
• Cloud locker for 20,000 of your already owned songs

The bad

• No iOS 7 gestures or proper integration
• No dedicated iPad app
• No in-app sign-up for All Access

The bottom line

Barring some small frustrations, Play Music is arguably one of Google's finest iPhone apps to date. It's fast, smooth as it comes and extremely nice to look at. Using iOS 7 a little more – back gesture in particular – would have been nice though, seeing the iOS 6 style keyboard in November brings on a sad face. The biggest issue isn't even Google's fault, but since you pay for subscriptions via Google Wallet anyway, would an in-app browser perhaps have been a good way to get folks subscribed without having to pay Apple a cut for IAP's?

Ultimately a lot of people have been waiting a long time for this. Converts from Android, cross-platform or generally all round heavy Google users are likely to prefer using Google Play Music over the Apple-centric iTunes, and thankfully Google has delivered an app that largely delivers the experience those people deserve. And, with this latest addition to the Google stable, the iPhone continues to be one of the best Google phone's that money can buy.

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Pandora for iOS has been given a nice, if not huge, update that's clearly aimed at improving the overall user experience. Version 4.4 adds an auto-pause function that kicks in and pauses your music the instant you mute your device, a handy touch to have, and slightly easier than turning on the screen first to manually pause, for sure. Also, in an effort to improve playback quality, Pandora claims to have improved buffering so if you find yourself on a "flaky connection" you shouldn't experience as much stuttering.

Otherwise, the usual smorgasbord of generic bug fixes and improvements are thrown in for good measure, and URL's that previously only worked on the Pandora website are now accessible within the app. Good news. Grab it now from the App Store, and be sure to let us know if in particular you're experiencing better playback now with less buffering.

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