Posts tagged with "Apple Music"

Apple Music Replay 2024 is Live→

Apple has released its annual Apple Music Replay overview of subscribers’ listening statistics for 2024. The recap can be accessed on the music.apple.com/replay, where you’ll find details about the music to which you listened throughout the year, including your top albums, songs, artists, playlists, and genres. If you’d rather browse Replay in the Music app, you can do that too, with the ‘Open’ in Music button that appears at the top of the webpage and opens the same content as a popup over your Apple Music library.

At the beginning of Replay, there’s an animated recap with highlights of your year in music set to the songs you enjoyed throughout the year. Replay also calls out listening milestones like the total number of minutes listened and the number of artists and songs played. Plus, subscribers can browse through their statistics by month. Also, at the bottom of Replay, you’ll also find a link to your Replay ‘24 playlist, with the top 100 songs you listened to in 2024.

The timing of Replay ‘24 is perfect. I’ve begun preparing my list of favorite albums of 2024 for this week’s MacStories Unwind, which will be out Thursday for Club MacStories members and for everyone else on Friday, and as my Replay playlist makes abundandly clear, 2024 has been a great year for music.

To view your own Replay 2024 statistics, visit music.apple.com/replay.

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Shazam Crosses 100 Billion Songs Recognized

According to Apple, Shazam has recognized over 100 billion songs, a staggering number of songs. To help put the milestone in perspective Apple shared some statistics:

  • That’s equivalent to 12 songs identified for every person on Earth.

  • A person would need to use Shazam to identify a song every second for 3,168 years to reach 100 billion.

  • That’s more than 2,200x the number of identifications of Shazam’s top song ever, “Dance Monkey,” with over 45 million tags.

  • Shazam Predictions 2023 alum Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” was the first track released this year to hit 10 million recognitions, and the fastest, doing so in 178 days. At that pace, it would take more than 4,800 years for it to hit 100 billion.

Those are fun statistics, but what’s equally incredible to me is the fact that Shazam hit the 50 billion mark just over three years ago in 2021. The app obviously isn’t slowing down, despite being older than the iPhone and App Store themselves:

Shazam launched in 2002 as an SMS service in the UK, and back then, music fans would dial 2580, hold up their phones to identify music, and receive the song name and artist via text message. Shazam’s following and influence continued to grow in the years that followed, but it was the 2008 debut of the App Store and introduction of Shazam’s iOS app that brought its music recognition technology to millions of users. By the summer of 2011, Shazam had already recognized over 1 billion songs.

Fun fact: The first song ever matched by Shazam was Jeepster by T. Rex. It makes you wonder what the 100 billionth song was. Also, if you’d like to listen to the top 100 Shazamed songs, Apple has a playlist for the occasion:

Shazam has come a long way from its SMS roots and is now sprinkled throughout Apple’s OSes. It’s a testament to how a fundamentally great idea can evolve alongside technological advances.

Pre-Orders Begin for Book Commemorating Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums

Apple Music has teamed up with Assouline, a book publisher based in Paris and London, to sell a $450 book that commemorates Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums of all time. If you haven’t heard of Assouline before, it’s known for its high-end books and other items:

Today, through its exceptionally crafted books, home fragrances, and objets d’art, Assouline invites the intellectual and curious into a world of beauty.

Source: Assouline.

Source: Assouline.

The book, which is available for pre-order is estimated to ship on November 25, 2024, and as the listing says, it’s:

A celebration of Apple Music’s inaugural list of the greatest records ever made, Apple Music: 100 Best Albums is a lasting companion piece to the digital initiative, which launched on the streaming service in 2024. With a release limited to 1,500 copies, the books are housed in sleek, transparent acrylic slipcases, each individually etched with its edition number. Inside, readers will find the featured albums, selected by Apple Music’s team of experts alongside an exclusive 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. The list is a wholly editorial statement that does not fit any neatly defined criteria—and is fully independent of any streaming numbers. In effect, it’s a love letter to the records that have shaped the world music lovers live and listen in.

This isn’t Apple’s first book. Notably, the company created and sold a book celebrating its hardware design in 2016, which it sold in a small $199 format and a larger $299 format.

Source: Assouline.

Source: Assouline.

The book includes what looks to be the editorial content created for Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums list, along with artwork for each of the 100 albums that Apple Music included in its list. There’s also a foreward by Apple Music’s Zane Lowe.

When Apple’s hardware design book was released, it was just as unexpected as this book. However, that book was sold by Apple and paid tribute to the company’s rich history of hardware innovation. A list of 100 albums picked by Apple Music’s editors and others lands a little differently. It doesn’t carry the same weight as decades of hardware design. At the same time though, as someone whose writing exists in an ephemeral format online, I understand the desire to collect it in a physical format. So, while this book isn’t for me, for fans of Apple Music’s album picks with the wherewithal, this looks like a beautifully designed eight-pound book.

CoverSutra Adds a Standalone Apple Music Client to Your Mac’s Menu Bar

CoverSutra by Sophiestication is a name that may sound familiar if you’re as ancient as Federico, who last reviewed the app on MacStories in January 2010. At the time, the app was a fully-featured iTunes controller. It could display your music in the menu bar as well on the Desktop. It also used to act as a Last.fm client and ship with a bunch of customization features.

This month, CoverSutra is back with version 4.0. This new version was rewritten from the ground up with a different approach: instead of being a controller for Apple’s native Music app, CoverSutra is now a standalone client for Apple Music on the Mac. In practice, this means that you can search your Apple Music library, pick any album or playlist, and start listening without ever having to launch the Music app.

Search is CoverSutra’s highlight feature. Using CoverSutra for the past week on my Mac has made me realize how much more time I usually spend in the Music app just searching through my library. Searching with CoverSutra, on the other hand, is fast and persistent. You can start typing part of an artist’s name, album, or song title, and search results will instantly appear in the menu bar popover window. And as long as you don’t start a new search, your search results will not disappear, even if you click away from the menu bar.

CoverSutra's layout for search results puts the emphasis on album and playlist covers.

CoverSutra’s layout for search results puts the emphasis on album and playlist covers.

I’ve also found that CoverSutra suits my listening habits pretty well. As the kind of person who likes to play albums from front to back and rarely relies on curated playlists, I’ve enjoyed how CoverSutra allows me to quickly bring up an album and play it from the beginning. The layout emphasizes album and playlist covers and makes it easy to instantly spot the album you are looking for.

In its current shape, CoverSutra 4.0 is pretty basic. Apart from search, playback controls, and the ability to set your own global keyboard shortcuts, there are no additional features or settings. However, I’m hopeful that the app can start fresh from this new foundation. Unlike similar alternatives on the Mac like Neptunes or Sleeve, CoverSutra’s potential as a standalone player in the menu bar may enable a range of more advanced features.

CoverSutra supports custom global keyboard shortcuts.

CoverSutra supports custom global keyboard shortcuts.

CoverSutra 4.0 is available on the Mac App Store. For a limited time, the app is available at an introductory price of $4.99. If you’ve purchased CoverSutra on the Mac App Store in the past, the upgrade to version 4.0 is free.

Apple Music Vibes with Five New Mood Stations

Today, Apple Music introduced five new mood stations:

The music featured by the stations is automatically updated from Apple Music’s catalog of over 100 million tracks and tuned to your listening tastes.

This isn’t the first time Apple has introduced mood stations. You may recall that it released Love and Heartbreak stations on Valentines Day. All seven mood stations are in a new ‘Find Your Mood’ section in Apple Music’s Home tab.

I haven’t spent a lot of time with Apple Music’s new mood stations yet, but as I sampled each, I was met with a familiar song or band, with every track matching the mood I picked. I’ll be digging into each of these station more as I edit my macOS Sequoia review.

What’s in My WWDC 2024 Bag?

My [Tom Bihn Synapse 25](https://www.tombihn.com/collections/backpacks/products/synapse-25?variant=42796481904829) backpack.

My Tom Bihn Synapse 25 backpack.

It’s time to get packed for WWDC, and like most years, my carry-on bag will be stuffed with everything I need to cover the event for MacStories. This year, I’ve focused on streamlining my podcast recording setup after some problems that slowed me down last year. Built around my everyday ‘away from home’ setup that I’ve been using for several months, I think I finally have a simple yet powerful writing and podcasting travel setup that should serve me well on the trip.

11" M4 iPad Pro and MacBook Pro.

11” M4 iPad Pro and MacBook Pro.

The center of my setup will be a 14” M3 Max MacBook Pro that Apple sent me for testing. It’s a fantastic computer that’s more than capable of handling the research, writing, and audio production work I’ll be doing, along with any video taken during the week.

I’ll also take my new 11” iPad Pro, which should help lighten my bag when I’m traveling back and forth from my hotel to Apple Park. Swapping my old 12.9” iPad Pro for the new 11” model will be perfect for this sort of trip. I plan to use it for getting some work done on the flight to California and for taking notes at the WWDC keynote. It’s hard to jot much down during the event while you’re sitting outside in the sun, so anything more than my iPad would be overkill.

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QuickTune: A Music Remote App for Mac with Tiger Vibes

I’m not usually nostalgic about apps. I appreciate classic designs from the past, but I find ‘new’ more exciting. However, for every rule, there’s an exception, and for me, it’s Mario Guzmán’s beautiful, pixel-perfect reimagining of classic Apple music apps.

Guzmán’s latest app is QuickTune, a remote control utility for Apple Music. The app is the spitting image of QuickTime 71 running on Mac OS X Tiger, with a sprinkling of modern features and fun interactions that make it a pleasure to use.

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Apple Music Debuts a 10-Day Countdown of the 100 Best Albums

Apple Music kicked off a 10-day event today celebrating its newly-compiled list of the 100 Best Albums of all time. Apple’s press release explains that the list was created by:

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.

Apple also clarifies that its 100 Best Albums list is an editorially-created list that isn’t based on streaming statistics.

There are multiple ways to navigate Apple Music's 100 Best Albums list.

There are multiple ways to navigate Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums list.

Each day, Apple Music is revealing 10 new albums, starting with albums 91-100, which are:

Rachel Newman, Apple Music’s senior director of content and editorial, had this to say about the list:

100 Best brings together all the things that make Apple Music the ultimate service for music lovers — human curation at its peak, an appreciation for the art of storytelling, and unparalleled knowledge of music and an even deeper love for it. We have been working on this for a very long time, and it’s something we are all incredibly proud of and excited to share with the world.

Each album includes editorial content too.

Each album includes editorial content too.

The 100 Best Albums list can be accessed at 100best.music.apple.com. From there, you can listen on the web, add an album to your library, share it, or stream it with the Music app. Each album has its own page including written material that puts the album into context and lists each track, too.

Apple is also celebrating the 100 Best Albums list on Apple Radio and giving the creators of each album an award:

All 100 Best Albums recipients will be given an award comprised of blasted anodized aluminum, sourced entirely from recycled Apple products, in a unique polished PVD gold. The design on the back of the award takes its cues from a vinyl LP record and is inscribed with the artist’s name, the album title, and the album’s year of release.

I’ve enjoyed browsing through the first ten albums in this collection and appreciate that it’s being rolled out in stages, allowing listeners to explore a manageable number of albums each day. This will be a nice treat to look forward to for the next nine days.

Apple Music Adds Shazam Radio Spins Charts and a New Industry Program

Apple Music has launched Shazam Radio Spins, a new set of top chart playlists built by identifying music played by over 40,000 radio stations in over 200 countries and regions.

The centerpiece of the new charts is the global Top 200 Radio Chart, which is updated daily. Shazam has also begun publishing charts for a wide variety of genres like Pop, Dance, R&B/Soul, Hip-Hop/Rap, French Pop, Reggae/Dancehall, AfroBeats, Latin, Country, Singer/Songwriter, and more.

Apple Music subscribers can access Shazam Radio Spins from Shazam’s curator page in the Music app or Shazam’s website. So far, I’ve only been able to access the Top 200 Radio Chart in Apple Music, but I expect the genre-specific charts will begin to appear before long because they are already available on the web.

In addition to the new charts, Apple has introduced a new music industry partner program to help record labels and music distributors spot trends in the music industry. The new Apple Music Partner Program is available initially to a limited number of US labels and distributors that distribute via Apple Music.