Apple Music updates make it a whole lot easier for you to find album release dates

By Lulu Chang Published June 9, 2018

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Apple Music is gaining ground on Spotify, what with the music service’s recent announcement that it had reached 40 million paid subscribers. And now, in an effort to keep those subscribers happy, Apple Music is rolling out a few updates that ought to improve the user experience. As originally reported by Mac Rumors, there’s a new “Coming Soon” section, which will allow you to see upcoming albums that are slated to be released in the coming weeks. This new feature can be found if you click on the Browse tab, navigate over to New Music, and scroll down to the new Coming Soon option, and is available on both iOS and macOS.

While Coming Soon won’t show you every single album that is soon to drop, it does contain a wide range of music genres. For example, Apple Music will tell you that Panic! At The Disco will be releasing Pray For the Wicked on June 22, while Florence + The Machine will drop High As Hope on June 29. Interpol, on the other hand, will be releasing Marauder on August 24. It would appear that Apple is updating the section continuously, so while there isn’t an exhaustive list right now, it could soon grow to be quite wide-reaching.

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As it stands, on desktop, you can sort the Coming Soon section by Recent Bestsellers, though it seems reasonable that the company will also allow you to sort by release date, genre, and more in the coming weeks and months. For the time being, there’s no sorting functionality on iOS.

Along a similar vein, Apple has also added album launch dates to album pages. If you check out the Editors’ Notes section, you’ll see a new note that reads, “Album expected…” with the release date. Even if an album isn’t listed on the Coming Soon page, they’ll still have an updated release date on their own page.

Finally, Apple is also tweaking the layout of its artist profiles — artist portraits are now found in circle-shaped bubbles, and if applicable, will have a Featured Release section with — you guessed it — release dates. Some folks have also reported seeing a “Play” button next to the artist, which will let you shuffle play all of the musician’s music at once.

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