connect

Apple’s history when it comes to social networks is not the brightest. The company launched the infamous Ping social networking tool back in 2010, only to shut it down two years later. This year, alongside the announcement of the highly anticipated Apple Music streaming service, the company launched Connect, a different take on a social network based entirely around music. Connect is much different from traditional social networks like Twitter and Facebook, though.

To unveil Connect, Apple brought out popular hip-hop artists Drake, who gave the service a ringing endorsement, as well as Trent Reznor. Drake touted that the service would provide a revolutionary way for artists to interact with their fans, but 8 months after the launch of Connect, it has yet to catch on with artists and listeners alike. Likewise, the feature hasn’t really received any updates or improvements from Apple in that time period either and there are certainly things that could be improved. Read on to find out some ways in which Apple Music could be enhanced…

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It’s no secret that Apple has had a hand in producing video and other content for artists since launching its new Apple Music streaming service. While we’ve known it has been hosting videos for artists using its own video player inside Apple Music, Apple quietly started adding an embed button to the video player that takes it out of Apple Music and makes it sharable across the rest of the web. The feature is notable for a few reasons and could mean big things to come for Apple, video, and its relationship with YouTube and other competitive music and video services…

The new sharing option began appearing sometime in recent weeks as new videos from Drake and the company’s latest Apple Music ad featuring Kenny Chesney included an embed button on Apple’s usual video player. It’s currently hidden, only appearing on the videos in some locations and only when videos are copied from raw webpage code, but it looks to be something Apple could really exploit. 
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While Apple Music’s content library may be plenty, there’s undoubtedly issues with the software behind it as the product is new and faces the hurdle of integration with lots of legacy iTunes cruft. Some may find that okay during the start of the three-month free trial period, but Apple’s streaming music service will have to shape up and quick if it wants to compete with Spotify and others in the same space. Oliver Schusser, iTunes International VP, tells The Guardian that Apple is currently working to clean up and improve the overall product:

“There’s a lot of work going into making the product better. Our focus is on editorial and playlists, and obviously we have teams all around the world working on that, but we’re also adding features and cleaning up certain things,” Oliver Schusser, vice president, iTunes International, told the Guardian.

Schusser is likely referring to improvements coming to the Music app in iOS 9, which Apple is expected to preview again next week and release later this month ahead of the iPhone 6S, but the exec also mentioned the upcoming Android version, Apple Music Connect, and Sonos support.
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