In his security and privacy post regarding iOS’s current music library, Ben Dodson adds a small addendum explaining that with iOS 9.3 apps can now add music that currently exists in the Apple Music catalog directly to a user’s music library. While a small and under-discussed feature, it opens up further possibilities for many different kinds of apps and application developers.
Looking at the framework’s revisions, we see that the additions brought in with iOS 9.3 now allow apps to add Apple Music tracks to the user’s music library and play it. The app would first have to check if the device is even allowed to access the Apple Music catalog, for example the user may not have signed up for Apple Music, or may reside in a country where it currently isn’t supported. Then the app could fetch the track and even play it by using it’s iTunes product ID.
Accessing the Music Library
New methods in the Media Player and StoreKit frameworks let you add an Apple Music track to the music library and play it. First, use the
SKCloudServiceControllerAPI to determine the current capabilities, such as if the device allows playback of Apple Music catalog tracks and the addition of tracks to the library. Then, you can use theMPMediaLibrarymethodaddItemWithProductID:completionHandler:to add a track to the library and theMPMusicPlayerControllermethodsetQueueWithStoreIDs:to play a track.
This features expands the possibilities for a multitude of iOS apps. If a user is subscribed to Apple Music, the songs could then be streamed off of there and quickly added to the user’s library. Apps like Shazam show the user multiple sources of where to play their discovered music. From playing it within Apple Music or Rhapsody, starting a station within Pandora or Apple Music, or just streaming the video from within YouTube. Shazam appears to be really striving to make the song playing experience as easy as possible. With this new iOS 9.3 feature, an app like Shazam would also be able to have a “quick add” button that would add the song directly to the user’s music library.
Another possible area the iOS 9.3 feature could reach into is apps specifically designed around and about celebrities. With the success of celebrity applications in the iOS App Store, this feature introduces another method to integrate fans further into the experiences. Whenever a celebrity releases a new song on Apple Music (which some artists may refuse to do…), they could push a notification to let the user know and quickly add it to their music library.
If an advertising company was able to get a complete list of your music library (along with changes to it over time) then they could very easily target you with specific ads. Added a lot of Taylor Swift recently? Here are some ads relevant to that.
– Ben Dodson, Your music library is a security and privacy risk on iOS
This level of user device is the crux of what Dodson points out in his article. In iOS 9.3, users will have to give explicit permission for apps to add music into their libraries, but users do not have to give explicit permissions for music in the library to be fed into the app.
Advertising companies can use this information to track music and listening habits to cater content around your tastes. While the general idea may be welcome by some users, the fact that they are never informed this may/is happening, is not.
According to Dodson, “…the last message I had from Apple was to say it was a security issue and that in keeping with their policy they would not provide any further updates on when (or if) it would be fixed.” Unfortunately, this response is exactly the type of response that Craig Federighi lamented recently.
Be sure to read the rest of Dodson’s article, and dupe the bug report if you feel it is a concern as well. iOS 9.3 is currently in its third beta, with expectations of a final release next month at Apple’s March event. We’ll hopefully begin to see more developers take hold of this new feature in the coming months. iOS 9.3’s framework changes can be found at What’s New in iOS, and more specific API information can be found at the iOS 9.3 API Diffs page.
What do you think of the possibilities of app developers being able to add in music to a user’s music library? How do you feel about advertisers or any application being able to read the music library without asking for explicit permission? Do you feel that either might be taking a step too far in something deemed so personal?
Let us know in the comments below. If you find posts on under-discussed iOS features and their potentials welcome, let me know in the comments or @gregbarbosa on Twitter.
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Now please, unlock landscape mode for the Music application on the iPhone. And enable split view for the Music application on the iPad pro – it’s very annoying that I have to leave my work only to change the music.
This is a great feature that will be incredibly convenient and useful. I can’t imagine what this guy’s problem is. A “security and privacy risk”? Come on now.
I do agree it is at least a privacy risk. It seems very backwards that on iOS an application can actively read the contents of your music library, but to write it requires permission. Other features like Photos, Location, and Contacts require permissions just to read the contents. Why not the same with Music?
It’s not far-fetched that an app with advertisers could catalog a user’s music library and content and track changes and market towards those changes.
I welcome that. Notifications when bands I like are coming to town, and maybe I can get pre-sale tickets. A new track, free for a limited time. It sounds great. Why would I care who sees my music library?
Will this allow apps like DJ apps and other music-related apps to access Apple Music tracks in app? It’s been an issue that third party apps can’t access and play Apple Music DRMed tracks…
That was my exact question as well. But at this point I’m not sure. The fact that third-party apps will be able to ‘play’ the music seems to indicate it might be possible.
Because the developers would have to add music using the productID, it would be fair to assume that they would essentially have to build an Apple Music catalog search tool to find the song’s productID and then play it.
But at this point, I’ll keep an eye out and if I discover something new, I’ll be sure to update it here.
I was looking at this differently. I was thinking about something like Bandcamp or Soundcloud where I would be able to buy or ‘get’ (if it was free) a song from those services via their app or website on my iPhone, add that to my iCloud iTunes Library and then be able to download or stream that song from my other iOS devices. I was thinking more along the lines of replacing iTunes as a way to add my own music to iTunes Match/Apple Music where I would now be able to use just an iOS device.
As it turns out, with this framework change, it actually doesn’t allow for that. I had hopes it would allow me to download songs from my Dropbox and add it to Apple Music, but it doesn’t appear that way.
Let’s see what happens with the incoming iTunes refresh that Eddy Cue discussed. They did mention wanting to put things in the cloud, but also enabling uploads. I wonder if they found a solution or are just ignoring a problem. Time will tell.
Oh ok, another article I read implied this was possible, “With its forthcoming iOS 9.3 update, Apple plans to allow third-party apps to add songs to a user’s iCloud Music Library, eliminating the need to use iTunes on a Mac or PC to upload songs to the cloud or add them to the iOS Music app.”
Here’s the link – http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/02/18/inside-ios-93-apple-will-allow-third-party-apps-to-add-music-to-your-icloud-music-library
This potentially opens up DJing apps with Apple Music. Something I always loved using Spotify with at parties, being able to smoothly mix songs with DJay or Pacemaker.
Hope this implies that adding music to my playlists will work on my Sonos then. It’s absolutely annoying to switch away from Sonos to Apple Music in order to add tracks to certain playlists!!
The current lack of this feature is why I cancelled my Apple Music sub this month and was about to switch back to Spotify. Hopefully Sonos can use this to fix their app.
Document (by Readdle) can access and play music in music library without any restriction, It can’t even be turned off in the IOS settings. I wander if they are the same problem?