AppleInsider Staff
Apple on Wednesday shared a fresh ad spot focusing on new and refined features included in the revamped Apple Music app, which launched in September as part of iOS 10.
Aptly titled "Explore the All-New Apple Music," the part how-to guide, part promotional commercial is set to the upbeat track "Where You At" by the Bohicas. At 1 minute and 21 seconds, the ad is longer than most recent Apple Music spots, allowing time to dive deeper into the app's user interface and updated feature set.
In the ad, Apple uses the app's bottom row of navigation icons as a scene template, offering a brief look at the features included in Library, For You, Browse, Radio and Search.
First up is Library, where users get quick access to all their music, whether it's stored in the cloud or downloaded locally on iPhone. Apple shows off the Contacts-esque Artists view and album cover grid before switching over to curated mixes. Interestingly, the Downloaded music section, highly touted during Apple's iPhone 7 event and subsequent TV commercials, is not featured in today's ad.
Apple instead opts to delve deeper into For You, and provides an example of how to set up the music curation function by tapping on floating bubbles containing genres and artists. Borrowed from the old Beats Music app, the setup procedure generates a taste profile that combines with iTunes listening data to deliver user-specific customized playlists. With iOS 10, Apple Music adds two new options in My Favorites Mix and My New Music Mix, both of which incorporate a blend of human and algorithmically curated content.
Next up, Apple previews music sharing and offline listening accessed through the three-dot contextual menu that appears throughout Apple Music. Search and Browse are quickly glossed over to get to nearly 20 seconds' worth of Beats 1 radio promotion.
The ad cuts between Apple Music's Radio UI and video footage of interviews with big-name musical acts. Also featured are shows from Beats 1 DJs Zane Lowe and Julie Adenuga, as well as those hosted by celebrities. Apple reminds viewers that Radio content can be streamed live or replayed in-app at a later time.
Apple is making a concerted effort to expose its subscription Apple Music streaming service to a wider audience. Last month, for example, the company enlisted the help of James Corden to create a humorous ad starring execs Eddy Cue, Jimmy Iovine and Bozoma Saint John.
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10 Comments
So... No video link yet? Where did they debut the ad?
It's on the YouTube Apple channel... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P25v--BKEXQ
With every release they seem to make the functionality for people who own their music worse and less convienient. In the latest release you can no longer see all the songs from a single artist without navigating in and out of every album, what a pain. Also purchasing songs straight from the app is no longer allowed. They are definitely pushing everyone to a streaming model, which I am not interested in.
I like the new UI and larger fonts, but I'm still baffled by the music storage optimization feature that does not seem to actually ... um work. Even when I only play tracks that are identified as being "Downloaded" there is no guarantee that a track will play when no connection or only a slow connection is available. Random playback of supposedly downloaded tracks results in songs starting to play but then skipping to the next song immediately (within 1 second) and sometimes the delay between songs will be greater than 30 seconds as it searches for a supposedly downloaded track that has actually been downloaded.
In many ways Apple Music is such a fundamental change to the way that we manage our music that it's hard to tell at times what exactly is going to happen when you hit the play button. It used to be that all of your music was managed via iTunes and what ended up on your device was totally subservient to what you decided in iTunes. With Apple Music this is no longer the case and you can no longer assume that what shows up in your device's music library will actually playback on your device whether there is a cloud icon on the track or not!
In a perfectly connected world where everyone had unlimited universal high speed connectivity the uncertainty and ambiguity would probably go away. But with many current consumers this is not the case so we're stuck in a situation where the assumed operating mode does not always work and "funny" things happen even when you have a big-memory device with 128 GB or more of storage. It's more than a bit frustrating but not a show stopper. I only wish it was more deterministic with fewer unwelcome surprises. I suspect the Apple engineers haven't worked out all of the kinks quite yet and the music storage optimization feature doesn't really work as intended in all scenarios.
Great post dewme. I agree. I'm lost more now than ever understanding how my (yes MY) owned music is available on my devices. I use iTunes to put the songs via playlists on my device and since I've joined Apple Music, this is a mess...until recently. I turned off iCloud Music Library and now I feel I have back control over MY music, but still without star rating efficiency. (That is a real sore spot for many.). I like exploring new music with Apple Music service but not at the expense that it is assumed I'm on a T1 ISP land connection! And, I can now buy songs or albums I discover by jumping to iTunes Store rather than it just saying "Play." For me, I'm considering migrating back to iOS 9 before Apple removes that version.