While the Apple Vision Pro headset dominated the news cycle this week, Apple Music is getting new features in iOS 17 to help it compete with Spotify.
Apple Music is finally getting the ability to create collaborative playlists in iOS 17. Apple didn’t spend much time going over the feature, but a screenshot reveals four people working on a ‘Game Night’ playlist. Each song shows who added it to the playlist along with their avatar—similar to the current Friends Mix feature. Collaborative playlists have been a killer feature for Spotify users, Twitch streaming communities, DnD night, and more.
Crossfade is finally coming to Apple Music in iOS 17, too. It’s a feature Apple users have been requesting for years, making it one of the more notable additions this year. Smoothly transition between songs so the music never stops while you’re exercising, commuting, and more. This feature is currently available to everyone on the iOS developer beta, though 9to5Mac reports the feature causes crashes for now.
Apple has also introduced some UI tweaks for Apple Music to beautify the music player. It now includes full-screen animated artwork for albums, similar to Spotify’s Canvas feature. The other change allows the album artwork to seamlessly blend into the bottom of the music player.
Finally, Apple is also making some changes to CarPlay to allow passengers to add music to the playlist using SharePlay. Developers with access to iOS 17 also report that lyrics that aren’t synced now have a bigger, more legible font that is easier to read.
A new star button on the music player has also appeared in images shared by Apple. That icon doesn’t appear in the current version of the iOS 17 beta available to developers, however. The button looks similar to the one found on artist’s pages, allowing users to be notified of new releases from their favorite artists.