Inside iOS 11: Apple Music's social sharing isn't just Ping reborn
Apple has added a new social sharing feature in Apple Music with iOS 11, allowing users to set up a public profile to share what they're listening to.
Editor's note: This examination was originally published in July of 2017, but has been revised and republished to reflect the release of iOS 11.
The new features in Apple Music mostly live in the "For You" recommendation area. Setup of the new feature is easy. A single button brings users to the signup page, where they need to pick a "nickname" to use the service.
Despite the service being for social sharing of playlists, user privacy is still an option. Users can select between sharing with anybody and everybody, or just limit who can see your choices to those you specifically allow the data to be shared with.
In typical Apple fashion, the new social sharing feature gives users granular control over what level of privacy they want to set -- and we feel that's important. You don't have to share everything, if you don't want. If you think you've got a particularly shameful playlist, you can toggle it off.
After you find other Apple Music users that you want to share with, they and you can paw through playlists that they've elected to share. The feature will still share playlists containing your personal music that isn't on Apple Music -- but it won't share the tracks that aren't available from Apple.
All in all, the sharing feature in Apple Music will take off as more users choose to share. Just a few days after launch, the system appears fairly well populated which speaks well about iOS 11 adoption numbers.
But, Ping worked well too, and wasn't accepted by users. The integration of easy sharing between Apple Music may be the "secret sauce" that makes Apple's second go-around at music-based social networking really work.
Editor's note: This examination was originally published in July of 2017, but has been revised and republished to reflect the release of iOS 11.
The new features in Apple Music mostly live in the "For You" recommendation area. Setup of the new feature is easy. A single button brings users to the signup page, where they need to pick a "nickname" to use the service.
Despite the service being for social sharing of playlists, user privacy is still an option. Users can select between sharing with anybody and everybody, or just limit who can see your choices to those you specifically allow the data to be shared with.
In typical Apple fashion, the new social sharing feature gives users granular control over what level of privacy they want to set -- and we feel that's important. You don't have to share everything, if you don't want. If you think you've got a particularly shameful playlist, you can toggle it off.
After you find other Apple Music users that you want to share with, they and you can paw through playlists that they've elected to share. The feature will still share playlists containing your personal music that isn't on Apple Music -- but it won't share the tracks that aren't available from Apple.
All in all, the sharing feature in Apple Music will take off as more users choose to share. Just a few days after launch, the system appears fairly well populated which speaks well about iOS 11 adoption numbers.
But, Ping worked well too, and wasn't accepted by users. The integration of easy sharing between Apple Music may be the "secret sauce" that makes Apple's second go-around at music-based social networking really work.
Comments
This is the result for Apple when they don't understand and believe and only put in half-hearted effort.
To each their own.
If you don't want to pay for it (or any streaming music service), that's entirely your business. For those of us who do, it's a nice little upgrade.
I use it everyday. The playlists for any genre/artists/moods is fantastic. Users are the curators! It just works really well.
The more useful part of Apple Music's social features would be following artists, getting updates and commenting on their profile. Apple Music has the Connect feature:
AI published a brief guide on how to follow/unfollow artists:
Maybe Apple can automate and market that more. It wouldn't be good to be bombarded with messages about updates but there can be a feature like how Apple News works. When someone has a particular artist in their collection, that news page can automatically fill with details about events, new albums/songs, videos. If they don't want to hear about a particular artist, they remove them from the feed. It can show a daily unread icon somewhere so that people can see there's something new to see.
Musicians don't seem to use Connect to the full and this may be down to not enough people manually following their profiles. There's even a guide here saying it's better to turn it off:
http://www.macworld.com/article/2943254/turning-off-connect-makes-apple-music-better.html
If people were automatically subscribed to unobtrusive updates when they follow an artist, the artists would be more inclined to update their profiles with meaningful content. Otherwise, they'll just use the main social networks.
The news feed can also pull in data from other platforms to save people having to visit each one. If someone is subscribed to Taylor Swift, Maroon5, Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry... the feed can pull Instagram images, tweets, new music releases, concert notifications, Facebook posts, Youtube videos from all of them into a timeline. That saves having to visit each social media site and artist separately. Apple could also have some people dedicated to boosting artist profiles by finding/acquiring exclusive content like live recordings at concerts without the crowd noise.
If someone was following John Legend, their feed would show people finding babies that look like him:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/john-legend-responds-baby-went-viral-looking-just-like-131216145.html
and maybe a follow-up from his wife Chrissy Tiegen telling people to stop sending her pictures of babies that look like him:
People who are only using Apple Music for the music could be missing out on this if they don't keep up with social media. Apple could more seamlessly bring them together.
Making official music videos more visible would be nice too like a video play button next to tracks rather than hunting down the Vevo channels on Youtube and it can cache the videos locally to save them having to be streamed every time. Sometimes the videos give more meaning to the song:
My only remaining complaint about Apple Music is that it doesn’t work with my Echo Dot (yeah, I know... but dang it’s convenient). If I can score a HomePod for Christmas then Apple Music may finally win me back over.
I actually prefer Apple Music over Spotify anyway now that they’ve got lyrics and playlist sharing built in but Echo/Alexa is my primary listening device so that compatibility is important.
I still love streaming music (I use another service though). The flexibility to get new music or search for other user's playlists is great!