iOS 17 Music App Features: Crossfade, Collaborative Playlists, Song Credits and More

[MacRumors]

Apple Music in iOS 17 includes several long-requested features, such as collaborative playlists and an option to enable crossfade for a non-stop music experience. This guide highlights everything new that Apple added to the Apple Music app in iOS 17.

Crossfade

Crossfade allows songs that are playing to smoothly transition into one another, eliminating any dead air time between songs.

Collaborative Playlists

With collaborative playlists, friends and family members can add to, reorder, and remove songs from a single Apple Music playlist. You can set up a playlist with several people, and each person can contribute songs and react to songs in the playlist with emoji.

Collaborative playlists are not yet implemented and will be coming to an iOS 17 update a bit later this year.

Apple Music SharePlay for CarPlay

iOS 17 brings an Apple Music SharePlay experience to CarPlay, so everyone in the car can play their favorite songs and contribute music. The car owner that has their iPhone connected to the car needs to have an Apple Music subscription for this feature to work, but passengers do not.

The Apple Music interface provides a QR code that each person can scan to get access to a playlist where songs can be added to the in-car Apple Music queue.

Interface Updates

Full-screen animated artwork is available for albums that support the option, and album art is also now designed to blend seamlessly into the music player where the controls are located.

When the music player is minimized, there is now a hovering effect that adds depth.

Non-synced Lyrics

Song lyrics that are not synced to the music that's playing are shown in a larger, more legible font. This brings the lyric size in line with the lyrics that are synced to an Apple Music song.

Song Credits

Tapping on the three-dot icon next to a song that is playing or in a playlist shows song credits. The credits show the performing artists, composition artists, and those who were involved in production and engineering.

Apple Music Sing on Apple TV

With an iPhone running iOS 17 and an Apple TV 4K running tvOS 17, the iPhone can serve as a camera for the Apple TV, showing you on the screen as you perform. You can also do this with an iPad, and it is the same feature that enables FaceTime on Apple TV.

Apple Music Sing is integrated into Apple Music. It uses the built-in follow-along lyrics and turns down vocals so you can sing along with your favorite songs.

Read More

More on all of the new features in iOS 17 can be found in our in-depth iOS 17 roundup.

Article Link: iOS 17 Music App Features: Crossfade, Collaborative Playlists, Song Credits and More

 

[Wilson1313]

Still an atrocious interface. Needs a ground-up UI redesign.

Edit: Reasons why (no particular order)

• Adding to library or playlist should be a one-click action vs needing to click the 3 dot menu
• No device handoff or memory for last playing if app is restarted
• Random glitches and stability issues (such as now playing not always reflecting current song playing)
• Song radios repeating songs and not as good at curating as Spotify

 

[eicca]

But: did they fix the bug where music copied from my computer shows up as each track being its own album?

That bug has been there for SIX YEARS NOW.

 

[AJTC]

Still an atrocious interface. Needs a ground-up UI redesign.

Edit: Reasons why (no particular order)

• Adding to library or playlist should be a one-click action vs needing to click the 3 dot menu
• No device handoff or memory for last playing if app is restarted
• Random glitches and stability issues (such as now playing not always reflecting current song playing)
• Song radios repeating songs and not as good at curating as Spotify

I’d add in that the Listen Now, Browse and Search needs to be faster/native instead of a web app wrapped in an app container. Those tabs are so slow compared to Spotify.

 

[paulgpetty]

Landscape…

Maps: yes

Music: still no

How do you like your dash-mounted iPhone in the CarPlay era?

 

[lazyrighteye]

Song Credits!
I’ll have to see it in action, but it’s a step toward complete liner notes that include all musicians, instruments played, producer, studio, etc. Can go a long way toward facilitating deeper connection to the music. Has been my main request of the platform. Excited to finally see some attention in that regard.

 

[seatton]

Crossfade feature does not work with HomePods. This is disappointing..,

 

[McWetty]

Still an atrocious interface. Needs a ground-up UI redesign.

Edit: Reasons why (no particular order)

• Adding to library or playlist should be a one-click action vs needing to click the 3 dot menu
• No device handoff or memory for last playing if app is restarted
• Random glitches and stability issues (such as now playing not always reflecting current song playing)
• Song radios repeating songs and not as good at curating as Spotify

Agreed. It’s a loathsome UI. I much prefer Spotify’s app but I sub to AM for the discount and integrations.

 

[fatTribble]

Collaborative Playlists looks very cool!
As soon as I make a friend I’m going to try that out.

 

[fatTribble]

Still an atrocious interface. Needs a ground-up UI redesign.

Edit: Reasons why (no particular order)

• Adding to library or playlist should be a one-click action vs needing to click the 3 dot menu
• No device handoff or memory for last playing if app is restarted
• Random glitches and stability issues (such as now playing not always reflecting current song playing)
• Song radios repeating songs and not as good at curating as Spotify

I’m glad you could articulate those. I can usually do what I want with the music app but it rarely feels intuitive to me. It just feels awkward to me. Plus it seems like every time I listen to music I’ll see random songs suggested on my Lock Screen for a few hours. None of it makes sense to me.

 

[cgs1xx]

how many years till we get an equalizer?
come on Apple... you can do it!

Also I'd love to be able to switch off anything "curated" like Listen Now, Radio, Browse etc

 

[mwd25]

Landscape…

Maps: yes

Music: still no

How do you like your dash-mounted iPhone in the CarPlay era?

Yup, I guess we are in the minority. I still miss the carousel from way back to, what, the Iphone 3g I think?

 

[Elpres81]

Still waiting on eq, landscape, and swipe controls. But like another poster said, maybe it just needs a complete rewrite.

 

[racer1441]

The music app has been an unusable piece of garbage for a few years now. Really just awful.

 

[svish]

Crossfade is one of the best new features

 

[BuffaloTF]

Landscape…

Maps: yes

Music: still no

How do you like your dash-mounted iPhone in the CarPlay era?

How do I like it? I like it vertical… which is a better orientation for both those apps mentioned. See more of the road ahead vs see less, no brainer.

But that’s years ago now. I don‘t mount it at all.

 

[Kyle-Culpepper]

Meh.
I gave up on Apple Music a long time ago.
Largely still the same SoundJam from 1999. With $Billions earned each year from Music alone, Apple should be innovating the hell out of this, not snoozing on Robbin's & Kincaid's laurels. I think the only people who ever touch this are the summer interns.

Oh, and let's not forget about "Classical". I shudder to ponder Apple acquired it only to put it out to pasture.

 

[dynAdZ]

While these are decent features, what the app really needs is a complete rework from scratch. It should get a whole new UI and coding framework to make it at least as fast and stable as Spotify‘s app is. It is hard to believe how fast you can navigate and search in Spotify compared to Apple Music. They really should start all over.

 

[MiragePL]

...and macOS users still can go ... themselves, because Apple's priority are new screensavers for them.

 

[nnoble]

As long as crossfade is optional - fine. For me, it ranks with video autoplay and unsolicited 'trailers' all of which are designed to remove sanctuaries of momentary silence to pause, appreciate and think. An ideal music streaming interface for me would be a blank sheet and an ability to add and erase from options available. 'Music WE love' would never see the light of day.
I find Deezer has the least worse interface and the IOS 'Focus', combined with it's underlying algorithms that - just works.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

But: did they fix the bug where music copied from my computer shows up as each track being its own album?

That bug has been there for SIX YEARS NOW.

So many oddities and glitches and weirdness that have no intuitive solutions when it comes to syncing tracks stored locally on a Mac to iCloud. Probably no solutions until Apple rewrites Music entirely.

The fact that there’s also still no one tap way of liking or adding tracks to my library.

How is it so difficult to add a big heart or “+” button on top of the artwork, in the player controls or in the track list?

I don’t get it.

How would the algorithm get any better with suggestions if telling Music your preferences is so tedious and pretty much a hidden feature within a submenu?

Is it because Apple doesn’t want me to manually give it input and just wants the suggestion algorithm to come up with stuff?

I’ve tried that and it makes suggestions significantly worse.

Overall, I don’t get Music and will switch back to Spotify once my subscription runs out.

Music for MacOS also has the worst UI of nearly any app I’ve ever used. How does it make sense to navigate my library as if music streaming isn’t a thing and we’re all ripping CDs and buying songs off iTunes?

Apple isn’t even making iPods anymore and wouldn’t even be in business if it weren’t for iPhones -Why do they insist on Music still looking like it’s made for iPods and not streaming on their most popular, biggest earning device of all time, the iPhone?

 

[baryon]

The Music app has become such a convoluted mess. It's trying to do so much on a small screen that I've never really gotten the hang of it. You can be in album view, in Now playing view, in "Up next" view, and switching between them is unintuitive, and you never know what the hell is going on. Sometimes you can seek, but sometimes the seek bar isn't there for some reason. It's often easier to just lock the phone, then control music from the lock screen, at least there's a seek bar there.

The first music app sucked when the iPhone came out, then it got pretty good in the mid 2010s, and now it has become this monster that can do everything the desktop app can, but everything is hidden behind silly pull-up, pull-down, slide-over menus. None of which can easily be operated while driving, mind you.

 

[nnoble]

I think the only people who ever touch this are the summer interns.

I like this line. I wonder how true it is?

 

[I am Sampson]

Cross play is great, but it’s a shame it doesn’t smartly “cut” any silence at the start or end of a song. I have it set to the maximum cross play amount and still there are only a few song changes that you actually hear any transition for.

Does anyone know if the CarPlay playlist sharing feature needs iOS7 on both the CarPlay device and the person wanting to add songs, or just the CarPlay device? Be great if it didn’t need iOS7 for everyone as kids in the back often have older devices that may not support it, but I imagine they do all need to be running it.

 

[LeLeon]

Does that mean we will be able to set full screen art as playlist cover? Because in the Apple Stock image the shared playlist uses Full screen art. (No idea what the official name for full screen art is)