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MusicKit update gives developers power to deliver Apple Music-powered Web experiences

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Confirming a pre-WWDC leak, Apple has unveiled "MusicKit on the Web," letting developers embed long-playing Apple Music experiences into their websites.

The toolset went unmentioned during Monday's keynote, but has appeared as an upcoming WWDC 2018 video on Apple's developer portal.

"MusicKit has enabled the creation of new, compelling, and engaging Apple Music powered app experiences," a description reads. "With the introduction of MusicKit on the web, as a developer, you can now bring Apple Music powered experiences to the web. Learn how to use declarative markup or javascript to enable Apple Music on your website."

Clear hints of extended Web support appeared on Sunday, when webpages emerged with options to sign into Apple Music instead of just listening to song samples or launching iTunes. After logging in, users were able to listen to entire songs, albums, and playlists, though they couldn't create new playlists or browse through personal libraries.

Web support has been a small advantage of Apple rivals like Spotify and Pandora, giving people the option to listen to music in situations where they can't use a dedicated client on their computer, phone, or tablet. Workplaces, for example, may block people from installing the dedicated Spotify app on a Mac or Windows PC.

iOS 12, coming this fall, should enhance Apple Music further with additions like song search by lyrics and improved artist pages. More changes will likely be discovered as developers experiment with betas.



4 Comments

eightzero 14 Years · 3148 comments

Idea: some books need a soundtrack. Bake it into AppleBooks. Allow friends to suggest their playlists to go with their books, build your own and share.

ready go

cheeseler 6 Years · 2 comments

Does this mean DJ software for MacOS and iOS, djay, can intergrate with Apple Music like it does Spotify? I understand if they can, that doesn’t mean they will, but can they?

auxio 19 Years · 2766 comments

cheeseler said:
Does this mean DJ software for MacOS and iOS, djay, can intergrate with Apple Music like it does Spotify? I understand if they can, that doesn’t mean they will, but can they?

I'm not sure about Apple Music, but I use djay just fine today with iTunes Match after I've downloaded a song from the cloud to my local device.  I'd assume that if you download a song from Apple Music to your local device, it would work the same way.  I can't imagine doing a professional/paid DJ set using streamed music (not locally stored) and hoping that your network connection works flawlessly.