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- Apple Music's iOS 27 upgrades include new artist pages and performance upgrades
- The platform has yet to roll out highly-requested functions such as continuity tools and social features
- The longer Apple Music goes without them, the better chance Spotify has at snatching its users
Tim Cook took what may be his final bow as Apple CEO at the company’s WWDC 2026 event, and there’s lots for iPhone users to look forward to with iOS 27, including upgrades to Apple Music.
In addition to the announcement of Apple’s next-gen Siri upgrade, Siri AI, the company is rolling out a handful of upgrades to its music streaming platform. It hasn’t been long since Apple last updated the Apple Music UI, but its Liquid Glass look divided subscribers.
One of the most notable new changes to the UI is a new look for artist pages, which now places the ‘Play’ and information buttons in the center of the page under new name displays. The ‘Essentials’ carousel, which spotlights an artist’s popular albums, has also been changed and is now in a list form that doesn’t look as punchy, which is a bit of a design downgrade if you ask me.
Apple Music redesigned artist pages from r/AppleMusic
It’s not just Apple Music’s UI that’s had a bit of a nip and tuck; the platform is also getting some performance enhancements in iOS 27, starting with the Automix tool, which uses AI to beat-match songs and create seamless DJ-like transitions.
According to Apple, the company has improved its algorithms to make room for better transitions. That's quite a vague way to put it, but I assume this means it will perform more efficiently when creating transitions between songs of different genres — a pain point I experienced during my time testing it out. Additionally, Apple says it has upgraded start times for quicker playback, and the 'Now Playing' page will now load much faster.
Apple Music is allergic to continuity tools and social features
I’ll always welcome new design approaches and performance upgrades — I’ve been running into delayed playback times far too often recently. But once again, Apple has chosen to overlook the meaningful features users actually want.
Many Apple Music subscribers like to criticize rival platforms such as Spotify, but if they can agree on one thing, it’s that Spotify Connect destroys Apple Music on the continuity front. To this day, Apple Music users are still waiting for a similar feature, and it’s one of the tools, if not the tool, that will really bring Apple Music into line with its competitors. The fact that Apple has never even discussed such a feature only adds to the frustration.
The platform also faces scrutiny for the inconsistency of its features across devices, creating a far-from-seamless user experience. For example, Apple Music’s new live concert information and playlists and albums tabs are still missing from the Mac version.
Something I was patiently waiting for during WWDC was Apple’s official announcement of Playlist Playground, an AI-integrated playlist-making tool similar to Spotify’s Prompted Playlists. To my dismay, though, nothing was mentioned, even though we were expecting a wider roll out to be confirmed after Playlist Playground came arrived in beta in February.
Just like continuity tools, this feature would give Apple the perfect opportunity to not only match a popular Spotify feature, but give its users another reason to stick around. Apple Music has already won on the audio streaming quality and editorial fronts, but Apple now it needs to start paying close attention to how it can build social features that complement its ecosystem.
It’s been four months since Playlist Playground first appeared, but there’s still been no word from Apple on when it will finally open its doors to the public. We might see a reveal at Apple's iPhone launch event, which will likely be in September, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
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