Apple Music, under an exclusive deal with Universal Music Group, is rolling out a collection of instrumental versions of pop songs — crafted based on audio science — that it claims can help you better sleep, relax and focus.
Apple Music’s Sound Therapy collection takes well-known songs and blends in “special sound waves designed to enhance users’ daily routines, while retaining the artist’s original vision,” according to the companies. For example, a “dreamy version of Katy Perry’s ‘Double Rainbow’… could help listeners drift off to sleep.”
Mood Playlist Widgets From Apple Music
The new version of Apple Music lets you trigger “mood” playlists from control center:
Opening the Music app will continue being the main way most of us interact with Apple Music, but I love what Apple’s doing with iOS 18.4’s new Ambient Music controls. The ability to assign a mood playlist button to your iPhone’s Lock Screen, Action button, or Control Center removes friction from the music playback experience.
Apple Music Opening Catalog to DJs
Michael Burkhardt, writing at 9to5Mac:
In a statement today, Apple announced that it would be integrating the Apple Music catalog with a number of popular tools, allowing for DJs to create mixes with Apple’s robust catalog. Users will also be able to explore a new DJ with Apple Music page starting today.
With these changes, Apple Music subscribers will be able to mix their own sets using the Apple Music catalog. This integration will be available in some of the leading DJ software and hardware platforms, including AlphaTheta, Serato, Engine DJ, Denon DJ, Numark, RANE DJ, and Algoriddim’s djay Pro software.
Spotify Wrapped & Apple Music Replay Now Live
Spotify’s Wrapped is now live, as is Apple Music’s version called Replay. As a longtime Last.fm user and evangelist it’s always interesting to see how these stats compare to my extremely diligent scrobbling. Apple Music got my “most played song” completely wrong. But I do find these “top artist/albums” by month graphics pretty cool (but, still not correct when compared to what I scrobbled). I shared my stats below, and I’ll post the actual numbers after the year’s over in our end of the year feature.
Read More “Spotify Wrapped & Apple Music Replay Now Live”Shazam Crosses 100 Billion Songs
Shazam has now officially surpassed over 100 billion song recognitions since it launched.
QuickTune for MacOS
Mario Guzman has released a new Apple Music app that mimics the nostalgia feel of old Apple operating systems:
Control Apple Music with this simplified controller that has the look and feel of QuickTime 7 and Mac OS X “Tiger”.
Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums of All Time
Apple Music are releasing a list of the “100 Best Albums of All Time.”
Apple Music’s team of experts alongside a select group of artists, including Maren Morris, Pharrell Williams, J Balvin, Charli XCX, Mark Hoppus, Honey Dijon, and Nia Archives, as well as songwriters, producers, and industry professionals.
I wasn’t consulted.
Apple Music Debuts “Heavy Rotation” Playlist
Apple Music has started rolling out a “heavy rotation” playlist. From looking at mine, it looks like it’s basically just a bunch of things I’ve played a lot recently.
Read More “Apple Music Debuts “Heavy Rotation” Playlist”Apple Adds Monthly Replay
Apple has updated its Replay website with monthly totals for top artists, albums, songs, and milestones.
Read More “Apple Adds Monthly Replay”Apple Music to Incentivize Spatial Audio Mixes
Benjamin Mayo, writing at 9to5Mac:
Apple will pay up to 10% more per play in royalties for tracks where a spatial version is available. This is starting with January’s payouts. Crucially, Apple Music users do not necessarily have to listen in Spatial Audio for the artist to be rewarded with the bonus payout.
EU Regulating Music Streaming Royalties
The EU has proposed sweeping changes within the music streaming industry to promote smaller artists and make sure underpaid performers are being fairly compensated.
A resolution to address concerns regarding inadequate streaming royalties for artists and biased recommendation algorithms was adopted by members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on Wednesday, highlighting that no existing EU rules currently apply to music streaming services, despite being the most popular way to consume audio.
Apple Offers Reward for Musicians to Use High-End Audio Format
Ashley Carman, writing for Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. is offering incentives to artists and record labels to produce music using a spatial-audio technology that surrounds listeners in sound.
Starting next year, the company plans to give added weighting to streams of songs that are mixed in Dolby Atmos technology, according to people with knowledge of matter. That could mean higher royalty payments for artists who are first to embrace the technology made by Dolby Laboratories Inc., said the people, who asked not to be identified because the change hasn’t been announced.
I’m not a fan of this as long as many Dolby Atmos mixes remain subpar and rushed. I’ve talked to multiple artists in the genre we cover that never even knew their songs were remixed for Atmos and had no say in the matter (and often disliked the mix). I don’t personally turn the setting on for this very reason.
Apple Music Replay
Apple Music’s Replay has been released. I guess December listening doesn’t count?
The End of iTunes?
Soon, all that will be left of the iTunes brand is the iTunes Store for music. And people buy much less music [than] in the past, having mostly shifted to streaming. Will the iTunes name finally fade away as music sales dwindle? It’s hard to imagine Apple stopping digital music sales entirely; even if fewer people buy digital music, the market isn’t dead, not by a long shot. Global digital music sales peaked in 2012 at around $4.4 billion, and in 2021 they had dropped to $1.1 billion. That’s a decline of about 75%, but Apple still earns a hefty amount of money from selling digital music.
Apple Acquires Classical Music Label
More than 80% of the music we listen to today is delivered over streaming, according to figures from last year. But when you look at classical music, it’s been a stubborn hold-out, accounting for just a tiny fraction of that, with just 0.8% of streams (and that’s in the stream-friendly market of the U.S.). Apple’s bet is that this percentage will grow, though, and it wants a piece of that action.
Robert von Bahr, founder of BIS:
We thought long and hard on how to maintain and build upon our prestigious history and looked for a partner who would further our mission, as well as an increased global platform to bring classical music to new audiences all over the world. Apple, with its own storied history of innovation and love of music, is the ideal home to usher in the next era of classical and has shown true commitment towards building a future in which classical music and technology work in harmony. It is my vision and my sincerest dream that we are all a part of this future.