All The Music Announcements from Apple’s WWDC 2019

(iTunes Isn’t Really Dead)

Another June means another Apple keynote filled with new ways to create, share, and experience music. Whether you’re a touring musician, or a casual listener, here are all the music announcements I found from this year’s WWDC.

iOS 13

Dark Mode gives Apple Music a sleeker look, similar to Spotify and TIDAL

Time-synced “live” lyrics on iPhone, Apple TV, and other products

Can finally rotate a video in the Photos app!

Video editing and effects within the Photos app for the first time

Audio sharing with AirPods — pair two sets of AirPods to one device

Apple Maps is more detailed. But touring musicians might want to stick to Google Maps

Siri is now completely computer-generated, using Neural TTS (text-to-speech). Hopefully this leads to better artist pronunciations?

watchOS

Decibel Monitoring to notify you when your environment is too noisy

Shazam can now ID songs via Siri on Apple Watch

New streaming audio API — can we hope for an improved Spotify integration?

New dedicated App Store for Watch apps

HomePod

Now includes Handoff, to pick up a song where your iPhone left off

Can now recognize individual voices to personalize Apple Music recommendations (playlists, favorites, taste profiles)

CarPlay

Apple Music now has an album view display in the car

Siri now supports third party apps like Pandora (no word on Spotify yet)

iPad OS

You can now connect an external hard drive, USB drives, SD card reader, and cameras directly into the iPad. This makes file sharing and recording even easier.

Safari for iPad will now include a download manager (ever had to download your demos from WeTransfer on the road?)

Desktop-class browsing in Safari generates a better display for sites like Squarespace and Wordpress (where your band site is likely hosted)

Mac Pro

Logic on the new Mac Pro now allows for up to 1,000 audio tracks and VSTs (4x the previous amount)

macOS Catalina

They didn’t kill iTunes; they just separated it.

“The future of iTunes is not one app, but three: Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Apple TV”
-Craig Federighi

iTunes syncing now happens in the background when you plug in your phone

All new software is available for public beta testing in July, and wide public release in the Fall.