The Apple iPhone event is scheduled for September 7, and Apple has already made some announcements and releases for some of its users. Personalized and new music playlists were rolled out to Apple Music subscribers who have been using the soon to be released iOS 10 beta and macOS sierra. The Apple Music New playlists were actually announced earlier at the event which took place in June at the Worldwide Developers Conference. The new feature is seen as a direct rival to Spotify’s own Discover Weekly playlist which saw the streaming site gain 40 million users in its first year.
Apple will be using the My New Music Mix as its arsenal against the Discover Weekly playlist, and they plan to change and update the songs every Friday with some new songs. When the playlist feature was unveiled at the WWDC in June it was named the Discovery Mix, but it seems Apple has had a change of heart maybe because the name might be construed to be the same as that of Spotify’s own.
The new playlist will be found in the ‘For You’ part of the Apple Music app, and it will give users 25 different tracks every week all based on their listening preferences and history. The idea works just the same as that of Spotify because they will make use of the users preferences to select songs for the playlist. Therefore one question will arise, and it is who has the best algorithm? Since the Apple Music feature is just starting, knowing the difference will not be until it has been tested for a while.
The new My New Music Mix is not the only new playlist that will be featured on the new iOS 10 operating system. Another playlist called the My Favorites Mix will also be added, and it will updates songs contained every Wednesday. In its description of the new playlist, Apple said that it will contain both songs you love and even much more.
The much more part can only be deciphered to mean that songs that are going to be added in the playlist will be based on those you have indicated as favorites. This will make music discovery the best since it will involve mixing the favorite tunes on a device and some new music that users will probably favorite soon.
The two new playlists can be subscribed to and also configured to automatically update and download tracks as they come, just as it is with the Spotify playlists. They have also been showing already on the iOS 10 beta operating system and the iTunes 12.5 which is on the macOS sierra.
Apple Music is undergoing a massive overhaul of its features, after Apple was criticized for cluttering the original Apple Music design. At the WWDC in June the company also announced that the social media Connect feature on Apple Music was also going to be dropped, and in so doing would put the user’s libraries front and center of the whole Apple Music offering.
However, even though the company faced some challenges with the design, the company has still managed to pose a threat to Spotify after it announced they had already acquired 15 million paying subscribers to the feature. Spotify is however still first with double the number of subscribers. The Apple Music subscription has been helped by the fact that it comes preinstalled in every Apple device, therefore making it easy to get into. A fight and competition in the streaming industry is definitely on the cards.
