Browse your library and Apple Music

- [Instructor] In this chapter, we're going to look at the music and video apps in iOS 11. Now this chapter assumes that you've already synced your device with iTunes and copied the music and videos you want to it. If you're not sure how to do that, go back and watch the chapter on syncing your device with your computer. We'll start here by looking at the music app, so I'll tap the music app icon on my phone. And at this point, you should see the five tabs or categories here at the bottom of the screen. However, what you see here depends on if you've signed up for Apple Music or not, or if you at least have Apple Music activated.

Apple Music being Apple subscription based music streaming and downloading service. In case you're only seeing four tabs down at the bottom of the screen, go to settings, to music, and here make sure show Apple Music is switched on. Now you don't have to subscribe to Apple Music when you do this, but if you're following along with me, when we go back into the music app, the tabs at the bottom of your screen should match mine. But again there's no need to subscribe if you don't want to. I just want to be able to show you all of the options here.

So right now we're seeing library for you, browse, radio, and search. The main tab you'll spend most of your time in if you want to listen to the music you've synced from your computer or purchased on your device, is library. This is where your actual music collection lives. But for you, browse and radio sections are all Apple Music related areas where you can browse and listen to music online. So here under library you can easily get to things like the playlist you've created. This is also where you can create playlists on the fly, directly on your device by tapping the new playlist button.

Here you can create a playlist name and then start adding music from your library. I'll just cancel that for now, and I'll tap library to go back. Below playlist we see artists, and this is where we can browse through the artists in your collection in alphabetical order. If you have a lot of music from different artists on your device, you'll see an alphabetic index on the right side of the screen that you can slide your finger along to jump to a letter so you don't have to scroll manually all the way down. I only have a handful of artists here, so I don't see that alphabetic index on the right here.

But from here we can just tap on an artist, and then you can view the music you have by that predicted artist. This allows us to view their music by album, so we can tap on any album to see it's contents, and then tap any song to play it. ("Ruin Us" by The Jellybricks) I'll just pause that. Now for some artists, if I go back a screen here, when you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll find this see more by link. Tapping that takes you to the Apple Music service so you can see all the songs, albums, and videos by this particular artist that are found on Apple Music.

But if you try to play anything here, and you're not an Apple Music subscriber, you'll be prompted to sign up. If you want to subscribe, you can start with a three month free trial, but again, I'm not going to get into Apple Music here, so I'll tap not now. Alright, so that's how we browse content by artist. Let's go back to the main library again. Here you can also browse your collection by albums or by songs. Now one slightly annoying thing here, though, is that if I choose to browse by album or song, by default it lists all the albums, but they're still organized by the artists' names.

So even though this first album is called Charmer, it appears under A because the artist is Aimee Mann. And Pet Sounds is a Beach Boys album so it's listed under B. You can easily change this though by tapping the sort button up at the top, and changing the setting to title. This is actually an improvement since the version of the music app in iOS 10, where you had to dig through the settings app to re-sort your music. Now one thing to bear in mind is that if you do subscribe to Apple Music or iTunes Match, when you browse from here, you'll also be seeing songs that aren't on your device, but that you might have stored online.

You'll be able to play those songs as long as you're connected to the internet, but if you want to see just the songs that are actually on your device, here from the main library page, tap on download music. On this screen, you get the same categories we were just looking at, but notice at the top, it says it's only showing music on this iPhone. This is useful if you aren't connected to the internet and want to be able to see just the music you have stored on your device. Okay so that's the gist of the library tab. And again this is where you'll spend most of your time in the music app if you're mainly concerned with playing music you own.

Well let me give you a quick rundown of these other tabs. The next one here is for you. Again, this is another part of the Apple Music service. If you subscribe, you'll see a customized collection of music that Apple Music thinks you might be interested in based on your preferences and tastes. It's partially based on algorithms, but the playlists it recommends are hand-curated by real people. But again you have to subscribe to see anything here. Next we have browse, which lets you search through Apple Music's entire library. You can browse new music to check out the latest releases, or you can browse playlists that have been hand-curated by Apple Music editors.

From here you can also check out top charting songs and so on, but again you can't play anything here unless you subscribe. Next we have radio, and this is where you can find the service formerly known as iTunes Radio, in which still functions very much like iTunes Radio previously did. But this is also where you can access Beats 1, which is the live, twenty-four hour radio station hosted by real, on the air DJs. One of the appeals of traditional radio is that you know you're listening to the same music at the same time as everyone else who is tuned into that station. And you can regain that feeling with Beats 1.

And surprise, you can actually listen to music here without subscribing to Apple Music, just tap the image for whatever's currently on the air to listen in. (radio playing) Or we can go back and tap radio stations to browse other radio stations. So if you're looking for some new music, radio is a good place to go.

And lastly we have the search tab. If you tap in the search field, you can choose to search your own library to find music on your device or that you have saved through Apple Music or iTunes Match, or you can switch to Apple Music to search the entire collection there to find songs or artists not on your device. So that's a basic rundown of the music app. It should be pretty clear by now that much of it is geared toward getting you to subscribe to Apple Music, which I honestly think is a great service. But if you don't want to pay 9.99 every month for access to the entire music library, you can stick to the library tab to listen to your own music at any time and without an internet connection.

And if you want to go a step further, you can always go back to the music app settings and switch the Apple Music option to off. Alright, so that's how to work with the music app in iOS 11.