Apple Music With iOS 16 Gains The Ability To Add Favorite Artists And Playlist Sorting

Last Updated on June 9, 2022 by Anu Joy

Due to the format of the WWDC 2022, Apple did not discuss the changes coming to the Apple Music app with iOS 16. Sorting playlists, adding favourite artists, UI modifications, and a new Lock screen widget are among the new features. Let’s go in depth over each of these new functions.

Favorite Artists

You can now add singers to your “Favorite Artists” list by going to an artist’s profile on Apple Music and hitting the new star button at the top of the page. Apple claims that you’ll get better suggestions and notifications about new releases from that artist after doing so.

Apple Music used to have a similar function where you could follow artists and receive information about their music and upcoming releases. The new Favorite Artists section appears to be more streamlined, with an emphasis on improving push notifications and recommendations for your favourite artists.

Playlist Sorting

With iOS 16, Apple Music allows you to arrange playlists in a variety of ways, including by the usual Playlist Order, Title, Artist, Album, or Release Date. You may also choose to sort these categories in ascending or descending order. Given the lack of automatic sorting options in Apple Music, this is a welcome feature. Currently, when you add a new song to a playlist, it moves to the bottom of the list, leaving the oldest songs at the top. You need to manually drag it to where you want it to go if you want to sort it.

You can now choose to reverse the standard Playlist Order so that new songs appear at the top of the list. On iOS 16, the ellipsis menu in the top right corner of the playlist screen contains these sorting options.

Lock Screen Player

The latest iOS update also brings modifications to the lock screen, which we will go through in detail soon. The way Apple Music displays the tiny player on the lock screen has also been altered. The Apple Music Now Playing widget has been moved to the bottom of the screen. This aligns with iOS 16’s new focus on decluttering the Lock Screen by shifting all notifications to the bottom of the screen, and you can choose to hide them if you get too many.

The Lock Screen player for Apple Music features all of the usual controls for playback and attaching AirPods or other headphones. You can even expand the controls to take up the entire screen, which will magnify the album artwork for the song that is currently playing and serve as your new iPhone Lock Screen image.

UI Changes

Finally, there are a few minor UI tweaks in the Apple Music app’s full-screen player. Apple has made minor changes to the user interface, including thicker playback and volume bars and other minor changes.