Graphic Designer Envisions Apple Music With Simpler UI, Music History Stats, Group Playlists, and More

Graphic designer Álvaro Pabesio shared his vision for an updated, enhanced Apple Music on Behance earlier today, and it's an impressively detailed look at UI tweaks and changes that Apple could make to fix a few user gripes with its streaming music app. As you look at Pabesio's designs, remember that this is a concept and in no way indicates or confirms what we'll see with Apple Music in iOS 12 later this year.

To start off, Pabesio revamped the Library tab, removing the vertical list for Playlists, Artists, Albums, and Songs, and introducing a horizontal tab bar that you can scroll through. With more space afforded from this change, new daily suggestions pop up right in Library for playlists, stations, artists, and personal mixes the app thinks you'll like.

pabasioi apple music concept 3
Pabesio nixed "For You" completely by introducing features from this tab into other parts of the app, so the second tab is now Browse. Here you can perform the usual artist and album searches, and find the latest songs and new releases, but Pabesio added in a few details to truly expand browsing on Apple Music.

More information is now displayed on the screen at once, thanks to the reduction of the current app's large image banner carousel and the same horizontal scrolling bar from Pabesio's Library tab. Pabesio highlights a much smaller new album/song carousel at the top of his concept, "Trending now" tracks, and places your personal mixes on this page as well.

Pabasio apple music concept 2
In the graphic designer's imagining of Apple Music, you can provide even more granular feedback into mood playlists by filling out a prompt, like "I'm [happy] and feeling like [going out]." Pabesio's description says depending on your response Apple Music will take into account the music in your Library, the mood you chose, and find "up to 5 hours of selected music" for you to listen to.

One of Pabesio's biggest overhauls is a new "Social" tab, taking the rudimentary features Apple added in iOS 11 last September and greatly expanding upon them. When you open the tab you see a similar horizontal tab bar like the one found in Library, and it houses Stats, Friends, Rankings, and more. Apple Music can now show your plays broken down weekly, monthly, yearly, and all time, and even lets you know if you did above or below average in terms of music listening each week.

pabasio apple music concept 5
Each user's page now shows their song play counts, following and follower counts, and when you visit someone it'll provide a taste comparison graph, similar to music social network Last.fm. Underneath that, Apple Music profiles now show individually played songs, instead of just displaying the latest albums or playlists the user listened to.

Pabasio apple music concept 6
These can still be seen too, however, with even more displayed on profiles like playlists, top artists, custom playlists, and more. For Apple's curated playlists, these also show follower counts, as well as up and down arrows to show when songs change position on charted playlists. All of these ideas extend to official artist pages as well.

Pabasio apple music concept 4
Expanding even further on the social features is a new group playlist ability, so you can create public or private playlists with up to 50 friends. Pabesio also notes tiny fixes like "relevant notifications," a "revamped album view," and the return of double-tapping artwork to love a song.

Overall, Pabesio's Apple Music concept is an interesting look into ideas that Apple could incorporate into the Music app down the line, and there's much more to check out on his Behance page, including his tweaks to Apple Music on Mac. We should be hearing about any updates coming to Apple Music very soon, with the reveal of iOS 12 and much more at WWDC just two weeks away.

Popular Stories

New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18

20 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.2

Monday December 16, 2024 8:55 am PST by
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
iphone 16 apple intelligence

Apple Drops Plans for iPhone Hardware Subscription Service

Wednesday December 18, 2024 11:39 am PST by
Apple is no longer planning to launch a hardware subscription service that would let customers "subscribe" to get a new iPhone each year, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman first shared rumors about Apple's work on a hardware subscription service back in 2022, and at the time, he said that Apple wanted to develop a simple system that would allow customers to pay a monthly fee to gain...
iPhone 17 Pro Dual Tone Feature 1

iPhone 17 Pro Rumored to Stick With 'Triangular' Camera Design

Wednesday December 18, 2024 2:36 am PST by
Contrary to recent reports, the iPhone 17 Pro will not feature a horizontal camera layout, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital." In a new post on Weibo, the leaker said that a source has confirmed that while the appearance of the back of the iPhone 17 Pro has indeed changed, the layout of the three cameras is "still triangular," rather than the "horizontal bar spread on the...
elevation lab airtag battery

Your AirTag's Battery Will Last for Up to 10 Years With Elevation Lab's New TimeCapsule Enclosure

Wednesday December 18, 2024 10:05 am PST by
Elevation Lab today announced the launch of TimeCapsule, an innovative and simple solution for increasing the battery life of Apple's AirTag. Priced at $20, TimeCapsule is an AirTag enclosure that houses two AA batteries that offer 14x more battery capacity than the CR2032 battery that the AirTag runs on. It works by attaching the AirTag's upper housing to the built-in custom contact in the...
apple tv 4k yellow bg feature

New Apple TV Rumored to Launch Next Year With These Features

Tuesday December 17, 2024 9:02 am PST by
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year. Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
blackmagic vision pro

Blackmagic Debuts $30K 3D Camera for Capturing Video for Vision Pro

Monday December 16, 2024 4:17 pm PST by
Blackmagic today announced that its URSA Cine Immersive camera is now available for pre-order, with deliveries set to start late in the first quarter of 2025. Blackmagic says that this is the world's first commercial camera system designed to capture 3D content for the Vision Pro. The URSA Cine Immersive camera was first introduced in June, but it has not been available for purchase until...
iPhone 17 Slim Feature

'iPhone 17 Air' With 'Major' Design Changes and 19-Inch MacBook Detailed in New Report

Sunday December 15, 2024 9:47 am PST by
Apple is planning a series of "major design" and "format changes" for iPhones over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie. The paywalled report published today corroborated the widely-rumored "iPhone 17 Air" with an "ultrathin" design that is thinner than current iPhone models. The report did not mention a specific measurement, but previous...
mac pro creativity

Apple Launched the Controversial 'Trashcan' Mac Pro 11 Years Ago Today

Thursday December 19, 2024 7:00 pm PST by
Apple launched the controversial "trashcan" Mac Pro eleven years ago today, introducing one of its most criticized designs that persisted through a period of widespread discontentment with the Mac lineup. The redesign took the Mac Pro in an entirely new direction, spearheaded by a polished aluminum cylindrical design that became unofficially dubbed the "trashcan" in the Mac community. All of ...

Top Rated Comments

ButteryScrollin Avatar
86 months ago
"Less Clutter"

*adds a ton of clutter*
Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sniffies Avatar
86 months ago
Looks hideous
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TMRJIJ Avatar
86 months ago
I like it.

Can we please get rid of the big bold title fonts?
That’s all I really want. I don’t know who thought that was a good idea but they’re wrong. That’s my only gripe with iOS’s design in general right now.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Applebot1 Avatar
86 months ago
Ping! That lasted all 5 minutes and I agree the social aspect is not needed in a Music search app.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Rogifan Avatar
86 months ago
I’ve never understood why random graphic designers who post stuff on the internet is considered newsworthy. Yet all the rumor sites seem to think so. I remember a few years ago when someone’s awful concept of widgets on the home screen was shared right before WWDC and everyone went nuts over it even though it looked awful. Same with iPhone and Apple Watch concepts that show super thin devices that could never be built and if they were they’d get maybe 2 hours battery life and everyone goes ZOMG! Apple must do this now, fire Tim Cook if they don’t. Of course anybody can mock something up when it just needs to look pretty and they don’t actually have to do any engineering behind it. :rolleyes:
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Rohirm Avatar
86 months ago
I liked when I could tap the album art and see all the songs of the album. Now it takes many actions to do the same thing. That should be the easiest thing to do in a music player.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)