Apple Music has received a big visual overhaul and a slew of new features. Apple exec Eddy Cue announced the refresh onstage today at the company's WWDC conference, and handed presenting duties over to Bozoma Saint John, Apple Music's head of global consumer marketing. The tabs on the bottom of the app are largely the same, but Apple has redesigned each tab interface to make it easier to use. The service now also includes lyrics and a daily curated playlist in the "For You" tab. The social network-style Connect feature appears to be greatly diminished as well.
The streaming service, which launched last June at Apple's last WWDC conference, has amassed 15 million paying subscribers, Cue said today. Yet with more than 1 billion active iOS devices in the world, some analysts expected Apple to have a more robust subscriber base at this point. Unlike its key competitor Spotify, Apple Music does not offer a free tier subsidized by advertising. Apple also cuts lucrative deals with artists like Drake for exclusive album releases, something Spotify has shied away from.
Throughout the past year, Apple has struggled with design and engineering issues stemming from the integration of Apple Music into the existing iTunes framework. And in some high-profile cases, iTunes users who had subscribed to Apple Music were finding thousands of files deleted without their knowledge or consent. Today's announced redesign is aimed at making Apple's entire media ecosystem easier to understand. Apple Music users should be getting access to the new version of the app with iOS 10 this fall.
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