New Apple Music App in iOS 8.4 Beta

The new Music app from Apple has made its first appearance in the iOS 8.4 beta that was released on Monday evening, 9to5Mac reports. Built in collaboration with Beats, which Apple acquired in 2014, the new Music app is expected to be officially announced at WWDC this summer.

There are a whole bunch of features described in the app’s release notes, helpfully listed in the above-linked 9to5Mac post, but none of them are particularly incredible one way or another. They seem mostly like solid UI choices: like putting the Recently Added music at the top of a user’s library, a MiniPlayer for quick control of playback, and Global Search to make it easier to find the music you’re looking for.

Another post on 9to5Mac—this one a hands-on with the new Music app—offers up some insight into how much the MiniPlayer helps the app’s usability:

“No matter where you go in the new Music app, you’ll always see a playback bar at the bottom the interface with the ability to play or pause a song. Swiping up on the menu bar will pull up the newly designed player user interface.”

As an Android user, I stick mostly with Google Play Music. It gets the job done. And it has its own take on the MiniPlayer as well, with an always-there control bar at the bottom of the app, plus more controls that can be accessed by pulling down the notifications tab from the top at any screen. I can’t say one way or the other whether the new Music app is a big improvement over what’s gone before—but I can say that it sounds a bit like what Google’s had going in its app for a while now.

For now, the app is accessible to folks who download and install the beta, so mostly developers and those who are deeply, extremely curious about what Apple is doing. Stay tuned for Apple to officially announce this thing at WWDC from June 8 through June 12, dates which were just announced on Tuesday. Mark your calendears.