Posts tagged with "music"

Apple Rebrands Beats 1 as Apple Music 1, Launches New Global Radio Stations with Fresh Hosts and Shows

Today Apple announced an expansion and rebranding for Apple Music’s radio efforts. The flagship worldwide radio station Beats 1 is being renamed Apple Music 1 while retaining the same content as before.

Joining Apple Music 1 in Apple’s lineup of global radio stations will be two new stations: Apple Music Hits and Apple Music Country. The former is dedicated to well-known and well-loved songs from the ‘80s, ‘90s, and 2000s, while the latter highlights modern and classic country music.

Like Apple Music 1’s roster of hosts and presenters, which includes Zane Lowe, Ebro Darden, and Brooke Reese, Apple’s two new stations will have daily on-air hosts as well. For Apple Music Hits this includes Jayde Donovan, Estelle, Lowkey, and more; Apple Music Country will be hosted by Kelleigh Bannen, Ty Bentli, and Bree, among others.

One of the unique strengths of Apple Music 1, besides its strong team of hosts, is the periodic shows by artists such as Billie Eilish, Elton John, and Frank Ocean. Apple has assembled just as impressive an assortment of shows for its new stations. Per Apple’s press release, Apple Music Hits will feature exclusive shows from “Backstreet Boys, Ciara, Mark Hoppus, Huey Lewis, Alanis Morissette, Snoop Dogg, Meghan Trainor, Shania Twain, and more.” For Apple Music Country the list of shows is even longer, featuring:

Jimmie Allen, Kelsea Ballerini, Dierks Bentley, BRELAND, Luke Bryan, Luke Combs, Morgan Evans, Florida Georgia Line, Pat Green, Willie Jones, Chrissy Metz, Midland, Rissi Palmer, The Shires, Carrie Underwood, and Morgan Wallen, alongside exclusive shows from legendary producers and songwriters like Dave Cobb, Jesse Frasure, and Luke Laird, and journalist Hunter Kelly.

Apple Music hasn’t changed its radio product much over the years, so today’s announcements represent a significant move for the company. While I still wish the Music app provided better tools for informing me when a new radio show I may be interested in is coming up, such as push notifications as a show’s starting, perhaps today’s moves are just the beginning. Now that the content side of radio has been enhanced, perhaps this fall’s updated Music app will offer improvements to the software side of the radio experience.

Apple Music for Web Debuts New Beta Version with Fresh Design and ‘Listen Now’

The new Apple Music web beta.

The new Apple Music web beta.

It’s been less than a year since Apple launched its first public beta of the Apple Music web player, which after several months came out of beta earlier this year and resides at music.apple.com. On the heels of an updated Music app in this fall’s releases of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and more, the company isn’t delaying keeping its web player in-sync with the app versions. A new public beta of Apple Music for web can be accessed now at beta.music.apple.com, sporting a design to match the changes seen in the forthcoming macOS 11 and iPadOS 14, and a new Listen Now page that replaces the prior For You option.

The design refresh doesn’t bring major changes, just aesthetic tweaks to elements like the sidebar. Listen Now represents the most substantial update, but it still works similarly to the former For You page. It contains collections of recommended albums and playlists based on your listening activity, alongside Apple Music’s algorithmic playlists like New Music Mix and Chill Mix. You’ll also find Recently Played, New Releases from artists in your Library, and a new prominent section called Top Picks. After using Listen Now in the OS betas for the last couple months, I’ve grown to prefer it over For You, despite there being relatively few differences between the two. Having Top Picks front and center, for example, is a better choice for me than For You’s placement of the algorithmic playlists up top, since I rarely listen to those.

It’s great to see that Apple Music’s web player will be updated on the same cycle as its apps. Apple’s history with iterating its web apps isn’t great (iCloud.com, anyone?), but to better compete against Spotify, which has a first-class web player, a more intentional approach for Apple Music is needed.

Anyone can access the beta version of Apple Music’s web player at beta.music.apple.com, while the previous version is still accessible at music.apple.com.

Soor 2 Review: Magic Mixes and Release Alerts Elevate the Beautiful Apple Music Client

Following the debut of Apple’s MusicKit API, which enables third parties to build apps and web experiences that directly integrate with Apple Music, 2019 was a big year for third-party Apple Music clients on the App Store. We’ve written about several of these apps, but the earliest and highest profile debut of the year was Soor, a meticulously designed client that distinguishes itself with a fully customizable Home view for displaying only the content sections you care about – choosing from things like Recently Added, Playlists, Recently Played, New Releases, For You, and more. Federico reviewed the launch version of Soor and found a lot to like about its unique approach, but he ultimately was disappointed by the absence of certain functionality that’s readily available in Apple’s first-party Music app.

In the nearly 18 months since launch, Soor has improved in significant ways. I adore the throwback Cover Flow-inspired playback screen, where you can smoothly swipe through a horizontal row of artwork, and time-synced lyrics are now available via a tight Musixmatch integration. There are still certain functions you’ll need to pop into Apple’s Music app for, sometimes due to Apple Music API limitations that Soor’s developer can do nothing about, and other times because the app simply doesn’t offer certain features yet – AirPlay 2, for example, is still unsupported. Overall though, for my uses at least, Soor covers enough core Apple Music functionality that there’s very little I need the first-party client for. The biggest absent feature on my wishlist is an iPad app, which I’m glad to see is on the roadmap, especially since iPadOS 14 will soon offer a much-improved first-party Music app.

Soor’s improvements have made it a truly compelling alternative to the first-party Music app, and today’s 2.0 update continues that trend by offering two big new features: magic mixes and release alerts. The latter is a nice addition, but the real pillar of this update is magic mixes.

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A GoodLinks Read and Listen Later Shortcut and Custom Action→

When I reviewed GoodLinks, I knew its unique combination of Shortcuts integration and custom in-app actions that rely on URL schemes had the potential to sit at the center of powerful, automated workflows. My hunch was correct.

When I tried GoodLinks for the first time, I began thinking of ways to integrate it into the research I do for MacStories and Club MacStories. Michael LaPorta’s thoughts, however, immediately turned to music.

LaPorta has built a ton of music-related shortcuts that you can find on his website. After reading my review of GoodLinks, he set out to create a shortcut to allow him to save music reviews and related reviews to read and listen to later. Here’s how LaPorta explains it:

So here’s the concept: GoodLinks can grab music reviews and store them to read or access later. When grabbing the music reviews you can customize the information associated with the review. You can use this customized info to also grab the album and add it to your Music library. Once you have the review (along with its customized info) saved in GoodLinks and the album saved in Music, you can use GoodLinks as a read-and-listen-to-it-later app that can be accessed via Shortcuts in a variety of contexts.

LaPorta didn’t stop there, though. He also added a way to handle upcoming releases and begin listening to an album from inside its review in GoodLinks using the app’s custom action builder.

I highly recommend giving LaPorta’s shortcut and GoodLinks action a try. These are precisely the sort of automations that the new breed of read-it-later apps like GoodLinks make possible.

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Apple Highlights the Music of WWDC, Including Federico Viticci’s MusicBot→

Today as part of the Discover section of Apple’s Developer app, the company shared three playlists and interviews with developers about the role music plays in their lives. Among the interviews is one with Federico, who was asked about MusicBot, the Apple Music shortcut that he created, and shared on MacStories, last December.

Sam Rosenthal, the developer behind the excellent Apple Arcade game Where Cards Fall, was interviewed too. He explains how his love of music informs his company’s approach to game development:

“A lot of the bands that I really loved… They didn’t stick with one sound,” he said. Rosenthal has carried that philosophy into his work: “Every time we make something, it should be different from the last. It should surprise people.”

In addition to interviews with developers, Apple shared three playlists: WWDC20 Power Up, WWDC20 Coding Energy, and WWDC20 Coding Focus.

With WWDC forced to be held remotely due to the pandemic and other troubles in the world, I really appreciate the sentiment shared by Federico at the conclusion of Apple’s story:

“Music transcends our differences and has the power to unite us,” Viticci said. “To make us feel connected no matter what’s going on in the world.”

Be sure to check out the playlists above, I’ve only had a chance to scroll through them so far, but they look like excellent collections to enjoy as you catch up on the latest WWDC developments.

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Apple Music Honors Black Out Tuesday with Awareness Efforts, Alternate Programming

Today Apple Music has joined a unified effort in the music industry to raise awareness about the injustice of racism and show support for Black communities around the world. Black Out Tuesday is being observed in different ways by different organizations, but Apple Music’s approach involves a full-page takeover of the For You and Browse sections in the app, which currently feature a message of solidarity and a single option: Listen Together. Selecting this will begin playing a special radio stream celebrating Black artists.

Apple Music users will still be able to access their full Library today, as well as use the search option to discover new music. But for the remainder of the day, the standard recommendations from Apple’s staff, algorithmic playlists, and any other radio content including normal Beats 1 programming will all be unavailable.

MusicSmart Puts the Spotlight on Music Credits

MusicSmart's extension inside Apple Music.

MusicSmart’s extension inside Apple Music.

For as long as I can remember being interested in music as more than a mere source of background audio, but as an art form, I’ve been interested in the people who make music – the artists and their craft. Back when I used to buy CDs at my favorite record store in Viterbo, my hometown, I would peruse each album’s liner notes to not only read official lyrics and check out the artwork and/or exclusive photographs contained inside the booklet, but also to read the credits so I could know more about who arranged or mixed a particular track. Beyond the feeling of owning a tangible piece of music, there was something about reading through an album’s credits that served as a simple, yet effective reminder: that people – engineers, instrumentalists, vocalists, producers – created the art I enjoyed.

In today’s world of endless, a la carte streaming catalogs, we’ve reduced all of this to a cold technological term: metadata. Our music listening behaviors have shifted and evolved with time; when we browse Apple Music or Spotify, we’re inclined to simply search for a song or an album and hit play before we return to another app or game on our phones. A streaming service isn’t necessarily a place where we want to spend time learning more about music: it’s just a convenient, neatly designed delivery mechanism. The intentionality of sitting down to enjoy an artist’s creation has been lost to the allure of content and effortless consumption. Don’t get me wrong: I love the comfort of music streaming services, and I’m a happy Apple Music subscriber; but this is also why, for well over a year now, I’ve been rebuilding a personal music collection I can enjoy with a completely offline high-res music player.

Whether by design or as a byproduct of our new habits, metadata and credits don’t play a big role in modern music streaming services. We’re frustrated when a service gets the title of a song wrong or reports the incorrect track sequence in an album, but we don’t consider the fact that there’s a world of context and additional information hidden behind the songs and albums we listen to every day. That context is entirely invisible to us because it’s not mass-market enough for a music streaming service. There have been small updates on this front lately1, but by and large, credits and additional track information are still very much ignored by the streaming industry. And if you ask me, that’s a shame.

This is why I instantly fell in love with MusicSmart, the latest utility by Marcos Antonio Tanaka, developer of MusicHarbor (another favorite music app of mine). MusicSmart, which is a $1.99 paid upfront utility, revolves around a single feature: showing you credits and additional details for albums and songs available in your local music library or Apple Music’s online catalog.

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Apple Releases Substantial Update to Logic Pro X and Logic Remote

Apple has released a substantial update to Logic Pro X for macOS and the Logic Remote companion app for iOS and iPadOS that is focused on loops, sampling, and beat creation. According to Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Apps Product Marketing:

Logic Pro X 10.5 represents the biggest update to Logic since the launch of Logic Pro X, with powerful new tools that will inspire every artist — from those just getting started with Logic, to those already using it to produce Grammy Award-winning albums.

Finneas O’Connell, Billie Eilish’s producer, says:

Logic Pro X has always been my one and only DAW. The workflow is unmatched, and the built-in sound libraries have been essential to my music from the beginning. Now with the addition of Quick Sampler and Drum Machine Designer, I’m getting back hours I used to spend in the studio building sounds and kits. This lets me spend more time writing new verses and editing 70-take vocals.

Source: Apple

Source: Apple

The update emphasizes non-linear production workflows that rely on loops, samples, and drum machine design, a departure from Logic Pro X’s historically timeline-focused approach.

With the new Live Loops tools, Apple says:

Loops, samples, and recordings can be organized into a new musical grid, where musicians can spontaneously perform and capture different arrangement ideas into the timeline. From there, tracks can be further refined using all of the professional production features in Logic.

Sampler is a backward-compatible, redesigned expansion of existing Logic tools to “edit sophisticated multisampled instruments, using elegant drag-and-drop workflows that automate complex production tasks.”

For beat creation, Logic offers Step Sequencer, Drum Synth, and Drum Machine Designer. Step Sequencer is an editor that Apple describes as inspired by drum machine workflows, Drum Synth is a collection of software-generated beats, and Drum Machine Designer is Logic’s drum kit tool that now integrates with both Quick Sampler and Drum Synth, providing more control over editing kits and integrating with the new Step Sequencer.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Finally, Apple is updating Logic Remote, the free iOS and iPadOS companion apps to Logic Pro X. The update will allow musicians to browse and add loops, trigger Live Loops, and apply Remix FX to a session.

Logic is available on the Mac App Store for $199.99. Additional information about the update is available on Apple’s dedicated Logic webpage.

Editing FLAC Metadata with Meta for Mac

Meta for Mac.

Meta for Mac.

For the past year, I’ve been using a high-res Sony music player to listen to my personal music collection. I detailed the entire story in the December 2019 episode of our Club-exclusive MacStories Unplugged podcast, but in short: I still use Apple Music to stream music every day and discover new artists; however, for those times when I want to more intentionally listen to music without doing anything else, I like to sit down, put on my good Sony headphones, and try to enjoy all the sonic details of my favorite songs that wouldn’t normally be revealed by AirPods or my iPad Pro’s speakers. But this post isn’t about how I’ve been dipping my toes into the wild world of audiophiles and high-resolution music; rather, I want to highlight an excellent Mac app I’ve been using to organize and edit the metadata of the FLAC music library I’ve been assembling over the past year.

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