Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Apple’s Secret Social Network Needs Help”.
Apple has a hidden social network, although you won’t really hear Apple ever call it a social network, it’s tucked inside Apple, music and yes, I do mean hidden, because I have used Apple music for years, but only this week did I discover. Apple music has an element where you can make a username and connect with other subscribers to see what they’re listening to all this time. All this time, all this time Apple, has long tried to make social networking a thing in its music services and time and time again it falls flat. But even if Apple isn’t flaunting this feature right now, there is no denying a social network is still woven into Apple music. I poked around, I created a username, and I found none of my friends to connect to even friends that I know use apple music. They didn’t have profiles I could connect to. It gave me one more thing to ponder this week. What’S the reason Apple doesn’t want to do more with its Apple music, social features, I’m Bridget Carey, and this is one more thing. Let’S start with a little history: Apple music began as a one more thing.
Eight years ago, at WWDC Apple music came out as a reboot of iTunes and apple really crammed all sorts of features into this streaming service. That made recommendations based on what you like to listen to. It was a little like Spotify, but it also had live. Radio there was a station called beats one and there were playlists curated by employees, and you could also pull up all your downloaded music in your library and all of that is still around today.
Although the radio station was renamed a few years ago from Beats to Apple music, One, however, what is not around today is something that was a major part of the Apple music launch. It was called connect as presented on stage by record executive and beats co-founder Jimmy iveen Apple music connect was a social network. That’S centered around following your favorite musicians, a fantastic way for established and new, and even unsigned artist, to connect directly with music lovers anywhere.
This is going to be very powerful for musicians connect, let musicians have a personal space to post short audio or video clips or lyrics or really whatever they wanted to post and you the fan would follow the artist. This wasn’t a small feature of Apple music. This was supposed to be one of the main standout features of the service.
They even got Drake to talk about it. Instead of having to post your stuff on all these different and sometimes confusing places, it all lives in one very simple, very easy place, and that is connect. I can’t wait to incorporate Apple music and especially Connect into what I’m doing next, but still it didn’t take off Apple quietly, shut, connect down three years later in 2018., perhaps because it wasn’t very social.
It was a place for artists to broadcast, to their fans and from early reports it seems, like other users, couldn’t connect with each other. This wasn’t the first time Apple. Did a network focused on artists.
You may remember iTunes ping. It was five years before Apple music. In 2010, it also had users follow artists to see their posts, but that closed down two years later. So where are we today? Well, even though Apple music connect is gone, there are still Apple, music, usernames and user profiles and in iOS 11 Apple was starting to add a little bit more of social to Apple music. So you could share what you listen to with your friends, but just because you use apple music doesn’t mean you automatically have a username set up now. I found all this because I was setting up a new iPhone to install the iOS 17 public beta on it.
So it was like a fresh iPhone setup and when I opened the music app, I was prompted to make sure I had a username and to follow friends who share their playlists, so yeah, I’m now on there as Bridget’s widgets. If you find me you’ll just see that I binge the Barbie movie soundtrack and piano Renditions of Zelda songs, I am not a cool person to follow by any means, but I don’t care I still like sharing some playlists I’ve made and, yes, you can choose which One of your playlists are public to the world with apple music. The people you follow can influence your choices in what music it suggests you to stream. It can show up as a friends mix. The only issue is that now that I want to find people, I can’t I mean I found some other Tech reporters who wrote about this feature, but even people in my contacts list, who I know have apple music they’re, not there.
If you click, invite you have to manually text them a link and that’s just off record, so in all these years, Apple never made an easy way to ask a friend to sign up Apple music is said to be the second most widely used music streaming service. Behind Spotify and as a paying customer, it’s frustrating that Apple won’t just take the extra steps to make it more friendly. For me to connect with my friends come on Patrick, be my friend join me in today’s Tech scene. Apple obviously wants to stand apart from the dysfunctional twitters and Facebook, and Instagram threads Apple sells itself on privacy, so maybe Apple doesn’t really want to do this social networking thing at all, but there is something worth keeping an eye on right now: Apple music may be Strong without being very social, but other services can take advantage of that weakness. Earlier this month, Tick Tock music launched as a music streaming service, Tick, Tock partnered, with major record labels like Universal Warner and Sony.
It has song recommendations and personalized curation and according TechCrunch it helps people find songs that have gone viral on Tick, Tock videos and create collaborative playlists Tick. Tock music also lets users interact with comments on songs and albums. So there’s some sprinkling of social interaction. There will it come to the US, no word yet, but tick.
Tock’S parent company bite dance did file a trademark application for tick. Tock music, with the US patent and trademark office in May of last year. Apple may not care much right now on improving its social offerings in the music app, but it may start to care when competition comes a knocking. If you use apple music, do you really I’m not alone? I want to hear what you think about this.
In the comments and in the meantime I know you’re gon na look me up. So if you follow me, maybe I’ll follow you back and maybe I’ll get some better music recommendations to stream. You know when I’m not listening to weird Zelda remixes catch you next time. .