iOS 10 tips: Apple Music app updates help users manage tracks across devices

AppleInsider

Apple's newly released iOS 10 features a revamped Music app and updated Apple Music service. These changes make life a bit easier in terms of listening to, and accessing, music on Apple devices. Here's how to take full advantage of them.

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Overall Changes

One of the first things users wil notice is the lack of the "My Music" tab when opening the Music app. It's been replaced by a Library tab that stores the content found on a device and the Apple Music account of subscribers.



Users can jump between various categories - ranging from playlists to artists to downloaded music - by tapping on the category itself. There's also a Recently Added selection at the bottom of the Library. It no longer takes digging through a series of navigations to find music stored on a device. Now it merely requires a simple tap on Downloaded.



To edit the categories in the Library, click the edit button on the top right of the screen. It's easy to rearrange and/or add categories and selections.



Thanks to an updated Browse tab, users can now easily find new music and playlists. You can now find new music offerings based on individual songs, festival performances, albums, playlists, artists and "Music You Need to Hear."

Check your Settings to initiate Music app improvements

The first way to utilize the Music app update in iOS 10 is to check your Settings. Users can choose whether or not the Music app will add a song to the Library after adding a Playlist.



Before iOS 10, adding a playlist in Apple Music to the Library meant that every song on that Playlist was added to the My Music tab automatically without giving an option not to do so. Now, Apple gives the user the power to choose what's added to their Library.



Second, Apple now allows device owners the option of having content automatically downloaded once they've added it to their Library, even if it's added from another device. This means if you add an album on your iPad that song will not only show up in your Recently Added section in your Music app, but will also automatically download on your iPhone or other device(s) for offline playback.



One of the most handy updates is the ability to tell iOS 10 how much space you want downloaded music to take up on your device. If you get close to that limit, music you haven't listened to recently will automatically be deleted.

Where'd the Shuffle button go?

Many Apple users have also been baffled by the seeming disappearance of the Shuffle button in the Music app. It's still there, it just takes a simple swipe up when listening to a song to find it on the bottom right corner.

Benefits for Apple Music subscribers

The For You tab not only has a new look, but is supposed to be smarter in giving music recommendations based on the users favorite songs and artists. This is also improved by Apple's recent addition of the playlists My New Music Mix and My Favorites Mix. They're updated on weekly basis, with new and old music offerings.



For those users that are into keeping up with the happenings of their favorite artists, Apple's Connect service is now located towards the bottom of the For You section and gives updates, music and videos posted from artists.

ggarnold

One thing you will notice is the lack of the star rating feature that has been a part of Apple's iOS Music app and iTunes for many years. How hard would it be to add the "tap album cover to show ratings" functionality to iOS 10? Removing this feature shows a complete disregard (or lack of understanding?) for some of the most engaged users of the Apple music world.

Hope you don't like to differentiate between "kinda like that song" vs "definitely a favorite". With iOS 10's music app you no longer have a way to indicate these type of preferences. Thanks Apple!

mike1

"Before iOS 10, adding a playlist in Apple Music to the Library meant that every song on that Playlist was added to the My Music tab automatically without giving an option not to do so. Now, Apple gives the user the power to choose what's added to their Library."

Isn't the point of adding a playlist to my device to get those songs on my device? Why would I want a playlist but not the songs in that playlist? If that was the case, I'd create a new playlist.

kudu

Apple Music has become epic! It's worth $9.99/month in every way. Soon it will overtake Spotify, I guess we all know that For me the killer reason is I can initiate a song so simply with Siri: "Play (song name) by (artist)" and off she goes, ANY song. And I collect music by telling her to "name that song". Later I go to iTunes and tap on the top right corner, the 3 parallel lines, and tap 'Siri' and all the interesting stuff I happened across is listed. I play them and add them to 'My Music'! I have killer playlists with oh so cool music. I'm loving Apple Music! 

Spotty what? Oh, SpottyFI. Sorry, Spottyfy. Spotify? What's Spotify?? Never mind, can't hear you. Cool music in my ears already! 

Haha. Just a good natured jab. And remember, Siri knows.

scottb

What's the song limit on Apple Music these days? I can't see going to it until I feel comfortable with my entire collection.

matrix077

mike1 said:

"Before iOS 10, adding a playlist in Apple Music to the Library meant that every song on that Playlist was added to the My Music tab automatically without giving an option not to do so. Now, Apple gives the user the power to choose what's added to their Library."

Isn't the point of adding a playlist to my device to get those songs on my device? Why would I want a playlist but not the songs in that playlist? If that was the case, I'd create a new playlist.

Because all those songs will flood your library and makes it looks like a junk place. This way your library will be cleaner. It will show only what you specifically want it to show, the ones you added to your library.

I'm adding songs to playlists all the time but new Apple Music made it very easy to add albums or songs you're curious about. Tap the + sign and it'll be added to your library. Since Recently Added section is now much easier to get to you can browse your newly added, sample it, add ones you like to any playlist you want or remove ones you don't like very easily.
Newly created playlists will also be there for easy access.

lostkiwi

matrix077 said:

mike1 said:

"Before iOS 10, adding a playlist in Apple Music to the Library meant that every song on that Playlist was added to the My Music tab automatically without giving an option not to do so. Now, Apple gives the user the power to choose what's added to their Library."

Isn't the point of adding a playlist to my device to get those songs on my device? Why would I want a playlist but not the songs in that playlist? If that was the case, I'd create a new playlist.

Because all those songs will flood your library and makes it looks like a junk place. This way your library will be cleaner. It will show only what you specifically want it to show, the ones you added to your library.

I'm adding songs to playlists all the time but new Apple Music made it very easy to add albums or songs you're curious about. Tap the + sign and it'll be added to your library. Since Recently Added section is now much easier to get to you can browse your newly added, sample it, add ones you like to any playlist you want or remove ones you don't like very easily.
Newly created playlists will also be there for easy access.

Funny, I hadn't delved into that Recently Added section since updating to 10. 
It is actually quite handy now. Thanks for the tip!

slprescott

In iOS 9, the Now Playing screen would show the composer of the current song.

In iOS 10, it does not.  For classical music, this is important.

Is there any way to make the composer name appear?  Or is it a bug?  You can see the composer in the Album view, but not in the Now Playing screen for an individual song.

(Not complaining; I love Apple Music overall.  And this is coming from a 51 year old guy who was very comfortable with the old buy-and-own-CDs model, in the past.)

Mork

Signed up for Apple Music, it deleted all the music I already had on my iPhone, my library stayed on my MacBook but why did it have to wipe the music on my phone? I had to reload all the music and playlists. Painful...

jume

I have almost gave up to Apple Music as it was hard to find what I wanted to listen and the App was cluttered and very unfriendly to use. But this upgrade brought back some light and I am sticking to it as it's finally much easier to browse and listed. 

The only thing I miss is the Like (<3) button in the lock screen while playing music. Now you have to unlock the phone, go to the Music app in order to like a song.

There is also on BIG BIG flaw to all the popular streaming music services. They simply miss out on the concept of Music Labels. This would be a killer function to Apple Music. I don't want to subscribe to the artist, but I would die to Subscribe to the Label! Also when you find a rare track it's much more possible to find more awesome music to  browse that label's artists/tracks... This thing should not be left out. When I am buying vinyls I always browse by Label and this is very strong music discovery feature. Each label should also have it's Apple Music page like, artist pages ... would be awesome!

Good example of this is https://www.discogs.com/label/10-Naked-Music-Recordings

GeorgeBMac

For me, the biggest improvement was the adding the simple, easy way to play only music residing on my IPhone. Previously I was getting dinged with $10/month data overages that doubled my cost for Apple Music and that were caused by listening to Apple Music via a cellular connection during exercise or long automobile trips. Now, I can tell it to only look at and play music I have already downloaded.

matrix077

jume said:

The only thing I miss is the Like (<3) button in the lock screen while playing music. Now you have to unlock the phone, go to the Music app in order to like a song.

Thinks this one will be brought back in the next update. In the meantime you can tell SIRI to love the song playing even when in lock screen. (and if you have Apple Watch you can also tell her to love the song even at watch face)

jume

matrix077 said:

jume said:

The only thing I miss is the Like (<3) button in the lock screen while playing music. Now you have to unlock the phone, go to the Music app in order to like a song.

Thinks this one will be brought back in the next update. In the meantime you can tell SIRI to love the song playing even when in lock screen. (and if you have Apple Watch you can also tell her to love the song even at watch face)

Siri is kind of useless in our language... Sure I can speak english but often she misunderstands words. Would be nice to have like button on the lock screen.

thisisasj

jume said:

There is also on BIG BIG flaw to all the popular streaming music services. They simply miss out on the concept of Music Labels. This would be a killer function to Apple Music. I don't want to subscribe to the artist, but I would die to Subscribe to the Label!

Apple would invite the labels (especially indie labels) to become curators on the Connect portion of Apple Music. This would be the perfect way to dive deeper into a label's catalog. Unfortunately, it's not happening that way right now. Labels are feeling cut out (I blame the labels, not Apple), so they are more focused on getting as much cash out of Apple Music and other streaming services while putting as little effort in as possible.

jume

thisisasj said:

jume said:

There is also on BIG BIG flaw to all the popular streaming music services. They simply miss out on the concept of Music Labels. This would be a killer function to Apple Music. I don't want to subscribe to the artist, but I would die to Subscribe to the Label!

Apple would invite the labels (especially indie labels) to become curators on the Connect portion of Apple Music. This would be the perfect way to dive deeper into a label's catalog. Unfortunately, it's not happening that way right now. Labels are feeling cut out (I blame the labels, not Apple), so they are more focused on getting as much cash out of Apple Music and other streaming services while putting as little effort in as possible.

I don't see that would solve everything. It's impossible that every Label would sign up as a Curator to make playlists. A lot of Indie Labels are one-man-band or few people and don't have resources to do that... While I do think more curator playlists from Labels would be nice, that still would not solve the Labels section. I think most of Labels, including indie ones are releasing music trough Apple music. Apple would just need to filter all music out, group by label and prepare section in iTunes browse category...

FernandoF

Totally crap. No rating with stars. No way to see lyrics. No way to add single music to play next, just full album,