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Hands-on: Apple’s all-new Music app in iOS 8.4

With the release of the first developer beta of iOS 8.4 this evening, Apple gave us the first look at the oft-rumored redesign of the Music app. With the expected announcement of Apple’s streaming music service happening in June, the Music app redesign has been expected for several months now. The newly introduced Music app offers a handful of new features in the first beta of iOS 8.4, as well as a redesigned interface that’s similar to iTunes on the Mac. Let’s take a brief look…

When you first open the new Music app you’ll quickly notice that the standard tabbed interface has been changed dramatically. Along the bottom of the app are now three tabs for “My Music,” “Playlists,” and “Radio.” You can swipe left and right to navigate between the interfaces. The “My Music” interface shows your recently added music along the top, similar to the recently added section in iTunes on the Mac. Unfortunately, however, you only see the three most recent items added. The interface makes it look like you should be able to scroll horizontally to view more, but you can’t as of beta 1. Although, there is a “more” button that allows to view additional recently added content in the upper right corner.

Below the “Recently Added” section is all of your music, whether it is stored locally on your device or in the cloud. By default, the music is broken up by artist, although there is an arrow you can tap to choose to sort by artists, albums, songs, music videos, genres, composers, or compilations. If you click the three dots next to a selection, you have the ability to play it next, add it to Up Next, make it available offline, and delete it. Gone is the ability to swipe left to delete a song and gone is the cloud icon that used to allow you to download a song. You now have to click the three dots to perform either of those tasks.

One of my favorite features in the iOS 8.4 Music app is the ability to manage your queue of songs. Apple has offered this in iTunes on the Mac for a while now, but never on iOS. With iOS 8.4, however, you can now choose to play a song next, or add it to your full queue. Spotify and other music apps offer features similar to this, so it’s nice to see Apple finally catching on.

Tapping on an artist from the artists page will bring you to all of the content you own by that specific musician. With a hero image at the top that fades to be the color the top menu bar as you scroll down, it’s a really pleasing interface. It can get a bit overwhelming if you have a lot of content by a single artist, but no more so than the original iOS 8 music player did.

No matter where you go in the new Music app, you’ll always see a playback bar at the bottom the interface with the ability to play or pause a song. Swiping up on the menu bar will pull up the newly designed player user interface.

The player interface itself in iOS 8.4 has been dramatically overhauled. The album artwork takes up roughly half of the interface, while the controls take up the other portion. Along the bottom of the interface are options for shuffling, repeating, viewing your queue, deleting the track, and downloading the track. The bottom portion of the interface is somewhat translucent with the shade adjusting depending on the color of the album to which you’re listening. To get out of the player interface, you can either click the down air in the upper right corner or swipe down on the album artwork.  Overall, I like the new player interface and how spread out it is compared to the original iOS 8 Music app.

Moving to the Playlists interface you’ll see another recently added section at the top for your recently modified or created playlists. Below that is a list of all your playlists with the ability to edit and delete them, as well as create new ones. The Playlists interface is somewhat bland at this point, with there being no options to sort or order them. Although it’s important to keep in mind that this is the first beta of the app, so Apple can and will adjust things as time progresses.

Finally, the Radio tab shows your recently three most recently played stations along the top. Below your recently played stations are the featured stations from Apple, with more featured stations broken down my genre visible below that. As of beta 1, there doesn’t appear to be any way to view your saved iTunes Radio stations. Instead, you rely solely on your recently played stations and search to find content other than what is featured by Apple.

The iTunes Radio interface almost feels cramped with the iOS 8.4 Music app. The album artwork for stations is so large and pushed together that it’s somewhat cluttered. Also, Apple needs to add back the ability to save iTunes Radio stations. It’s a pain to have to search every time you want to find a station to listen to. Also gone is the “info” screen that allowed you to tune stations and choose between clean and explicit versions of tracks. Again, this is a beta so things can and will change.

Overall, the Music interface Apple has previewed with the first developer beta of iOS 8.4 is promising. Its similarity to iTunes on the Mac will make it familiar to many users. There are still some areas in which Apple needs to improve it, however, and that’s to be expected with a beta. Some of the buttons are awkwardly small, while the iTunes Radio interface is cluttered and unintuitive. Nevertheless, I’m a fan of the overall design direction Apple has taken the Music app and I think, especially when coupled with a streaming music service, it will be unmatched by its rivals. More images below:

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Comments

  1. Tuvatech - 9 years ago

    Wow, looks nice. I haven’t been really satisfied with the current version, so I’m glad they are working on it.

    I wonder whether they have any plans to update the Podcast app as well?! That’s… horrible. :)

  2. louiggi - 9 years ago

    I sincerely hope that this new software has a more productive rollout than the disastrous introduction of the new Photos App for Mac OS. I’ve had to restore my system three times in a row now.

  3. Tim Jr. - 9 years ago

    lord, all I wanted was a screen cap of horizontal view showing Album Art mode was no more!

    Can’t you do that? Please! lol

    • Mike Beasley - 9 years ago

      the app doesn’t do anything in landscape now

      • Greg Edmiston - 9 years ago

        The iPhone 6 Plus just keeps on getting better, huh?

      • haws24 - 9 years ago

        What do you mean it doesn’t do anything in landscape? Like the app stays portrait, as if rotation lock were on? Screenshots would be nice.

      • Mike Beasley - 9 years ago

        There’s nothing to see in landscape. The screenshots you see above could have been taken in landscape for all I know. It doesn’t change at all.

    • haws24 - 9 years ago

      As I looked through the screenshots, I thought the exact same thing. I hate the current Album Art view!! It is worthless. I want it to be kinda like the carplay display.

    • olsjoe - 9 years ago

      Can one of you beta testers out there please request that they change the landscape cover art mode in the music app. It is perhaps the most worthless feature apple has ever designed, and without even the option to turn it off I at times have to just lock my phones rotation just to avoid it. I am so annoyed that this has yet to be changed.

      • inherwonderland - 9 years ago

        Mine stays in portrait mode with iOS 8.4 – my screen rotation is NOT locked, but the music app does absolutely nothing now when I rotate my screen.

  4. o0smoothies0o - 9 years ago

    Don’t really like the artwork going clear to the top. Clearly it will be problematic for readability of the status bar, and especially the time, due to little contrast with some artwork.

    • Jörg Wißemann - 9 years ago

      Please use the Apple Watch to read the time.

    • Cory © (@Nardes) - 9 years ago

      Agreed 100%

      That’s my one complaint about all of it… because now when I take screenshots of my Now Playing, I’ll have to crop out part of the album art to crop out the time. Petty I know, but still.

      Otherwise it looks great!

  5. luk - 9 years ago

    so does ‘Delete’ actually remove the track from iTunes Match now?

  6. Under radio, under the recently played area, next to that is ‘more’ if you click that it will bring up previous stations that you listened to, sorted by the last date it was played on.

  7. Rhys Bentley - 9 years ago

    Audiobooks has also been moved into the iBooks app with a new design which oddly enough does support landscape mode

  8. Jiří P. (@rewolwer) - 9 years ago

    I would like to have +/- 15sec buttons on the sides in the same way as they are in the Podcast app. Slider’s precision is terrible and for a fan of electronic music who listens to 2h+ sets only is awful to find a particular track in the set. Touchwheel from iPods is unbeatable :-(

    • Greg Edmiston - 9 years ago

      In iTunes on OS X, pressing and holding the next/previous buttons have an *actually useful* behavior, skipping 7-15 seconds at a time (playing snippets at normal 1x speed). It works as a reasonable alternative to the +/- 15 sec buttons.

      On iOS, if you press and hold the next/previous buttons, it tries to fast-forward by speeding up the playback, which ends up being both tedious and incomprehensible. (It’s even worse in reverse.)

  9. Steven Kool - 9 years ago

    I just reeeeeaaaaaally want an “Add to Playlist” button in the “Now Playing” view.

  10. lellis2k - 9 years ago

    Finally the option to queue songs, that’s been a loooooong time coming!

    Think this will bring iTunes Radio to the UK?

  11. Mario Cunha - 9 years ago

    When installed I first saw briefly radio option…. now just disappeared… I only see my music and playlists. I’m in Portugal… I don’t know what are the plans for apple of the upcoming music service, but if they really want to compete with Spotify they must go global. I would love to switch my premium spotify account for a similar or better made by apple….

    • Akos Szente (@akosssss) - 9 years ago

      That always happens after a clean install since iOS 7.0.
      You’ll see radio for a few seconds and then it disappears right when it realises you’re not from the US.

  12. iRichard (@iRichard) - 9 years ago

    Is it possible to sort music from oldest (on the top) to newest? like in the iOS 6 times… I hate to have newest albums on top, we can change the date order on Macs, why not on iOS devices?

  13. Paul Van Obberghen - 9 years ago

    Only briefly mentioned, it seems there is now a search facility which was painfuly absent from the Music App. Until now?
    Let us hope that Apple finally redesign the iTunes App for MacOS in the wake of the this new Music App release. iTunes is a mess. Apple should break it down like on iOS: split Music, Films and Videos and iDevices syncing and back-up into equivalent dedicated apps. Books are already out…

    • atimoda - 9 years ago

      actually, you can search in the current Music App. go do artists, or songs, or albums, and slide down the screen. the search will appear on top.
      but I agree that its very hidden, most of people dont know about it.

  14. I am very excited for this! I have been waiting for an Music app update since iOS 7!

    Any idea if/when the public beta will be released for this? I’m assuming they’ll wait until the 2nd or 3rd beta to iron out the worst of the bugs?

  15. lepolero - 9 years ago

    I like that repeat/shuffle buttons are coming back. I would appreciate if volume changes did not light up the screen, because its useless when you have your phone in pocket… why not use that light sensor for that?

    • Mike Beasley - 9 years ago

      The volume buttons haven’t actually turned the screen on since like iOS 3 or something.

      • lepolero - 9 years ago

        I know that, but I had an iOS pause since I skipped iOS7 (but i had all iPhones since the first one) the screen stayed dark, as it should, but then i switched to 5S with iOS8 and the screen always lights up if I change volume during playback. I briefly consulted that with some owners and they said that in iOS7, this was not an issue, but in iOS8, the screen just lights up with earphone buttons or with buttons on iPhone.

  16. michaelg379 - 9 years ago

    Not seeing Audio Books – potential move to iBooks?

  17. Iestyn Lloyd (@iestynx) - 9 years ago

    Has it fixed the missing artwork that keeps happening with iTunes match?

  18. J.latham - 9 years ago

    A lot of similarities to a redesign project I worked on a couple of months ago. https://www.behance.net/gallery/20970813/-Music

  19. Simon Marheim - 9 years ago

    Wondering if this will make iTunes Radio available to everyone, instead of just hiding that section and only showing My Music and Playlists. Would love for Apple to finally expand iTunes Radio to the rest of their users, instead of a set few ones.

  20. jsarpong - 9 years ago

    Reblogged this on IDC GH and commented:
    Hands On With New Music App for IOS 8.4 beta 1

  21. galley99 - 9 years ago

    The one feature I want is to be able to browse playlists as groups of albums, not individual tracks. As an example, one playlist contains all 47 volumes of the Ultra-Lounge series. I want to be able to browse through those albums, only.

  22. the layout is a lot like Google Play Music app on Android, even the animations are the same lol.

  23. crateish (@crateish) - 9 years ago

    No dark mode or portrait album art (with titles) grid. Looks like I’m sticking with Ecoute for a while.

  24. hosteff - 9 years ago

    I see there is a “Music Video” tab. As there is no landscape mode, It will still not be possible to watch Music Videos in landscape mode like it was in iOS6? I have mostly Music Videos instead of just Music, with iOS7 they took away landscape mode for Music Videos and also took away Video out support, made the music player worthless for me and all my music videos as well, as third party apps won’t play iTunes purchased Videos… And the Video Player is worthless too as it doesn’t support playlists. Looks to me as there is still a lot to fix here….

  25. Pat Dodd (@patdodd) - 9 years ago

    So still no toggle in app for local vs iCloud stored files? That’s one the main reasons I’ve been using Amazon’s music app recently, that and the fact that Prime Music is getting better all the time. Hopefully with the integration of Beats rolled together with iTunes Radio and better integration with Match I can go back to using the default app. Well, only if they raise the 25,000 song limit on Match.

    • David Q - 9 years ago

      I agree 100% with you. The Beats toggle isn’t a whole lot better than the default Music app so I’m not particularly hopeful this will change but, like you, it’s a critical component of the app for me.

  26. Still Radio is not available in most of countries other than US……So nice innovation Apple.

  27. Andy Zarka - 9 years ago

    With a premium Rhapsody subscription you can download and listen to tracks from their streaming service while offline. I can put them on a SanDisk Clip to run with. What is the possibility that Apple could do something similar for the Shuffle? I really don’t like running with my phone and perhaps I’m just too cheap to want to buy every song I run to so being able to download streamed songs to a finite number of devices per account would be wonderful. Then once they add that feature (along with GPS) to the watch I’ll be complete.

  28. anthonyharris7 - 9 years ago

    Does it bring back the collapsed album view so you dont have to scroll through each song from every artists album?

  29. Loren Sims - 9 years ago

    Clean look is nice, but I’m finding it hard to find controls. I already sent in a feedback complaint about not being able to figure out how to shuffle.
    Thank you for showing me where to find this, but it’s still just a bit too buried for my purposes.

  30. Phillip Burton - 9 years ago

    Hope there is “shuffle albums.”

  31. David Green - 9 years ago

    Ok so how do you get out of shuffle on an iPad? The option on the iPhone is not on the iPad version.

  32. Gianni Young - 9 years ago

    Hate it all the way, not intuitive, and it is all about Apple Music not the user,
    Try jumping to the next song…….. and were is play all songs? And how do I stop the same song from playing over and over ??? Suck! Huge step backward, Apple!
    Make it simpler, I am not a programmer, I just want to play and listen to music….Dhu!!!

  33. does anyone know if and how I can see my song ratings in this without clicking on each individual song?

  34. The one big problem i have with the new app is that it took my favorite feature away. The thing that separated the apple music app from many others is that there used to be a song counter tied to your song list. I have about 4K songs which i play randomly and the song counter would play a song only once and never again until you start the whole list again. That is now gone and the shuffle feature on the new app will randomly play songs but same songs that once played will show up again in the randomization. This is what I hated about android music players. I want to set a shuffle and i only want to hear each song once thus going through my 4k playlist hearing all different music. This may make me leave apple since this is the thing I use the most. Pitty!!!!

  35. Zoe Wilson - 9 years ago

    before you could click the block of lines to see the other songs on the album but it doesn’t do it on this one how do I find this?

  36. rwdrakes99 - 9 years ago

    Does anyone know if there’s a way to reverse the “music” app update? Any help is appreciated!! Thank you!

    Ryan

Author

Avatar for Chance Miller Chance Miller

Chance is an editor for the entire 9to5 network and covers the latest Apple news for 9to5Mac.

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