December 28, 2022 at 9:28 p.m.
- Apple Music is a music subscription service that streams songs, albums, and playlists in lossless audio quality for a monthly subscription fee.
- Apple Music boasts almost 100 million subscribers.
- Partially curated by humans, Apple Music also features intelligent playlists based on listening patterns.
- Although users can “love” songs on Apple Music by tapping an icon, there’s no easy way to access this music at a later date.
What is Apple Music?
This section may prove informative if you’re entirely new to Apple Music. For those familiar with the service, feel free to skip to the next section.
Apple Music is a music subscription service, similar to Spotify and other offerings. Users pay a monthly subscription fee ($4.99 – $14.99) to access almost 100 million songs. With this much music, you’ll unlikely miss out on anything. If that’s not enough, with lossless audio quality, most of the music sounds as good as a brand new CD, with many titles offering master-quality recordings. I’ve listened to some classic albums with Apple Music’s highest fidelity, and it’s awe-inspiring!
With so much music, Apple Music offers various tools for exploration. Radio stations, both live and generated, provide easy access to music. For connoisseurs, searching through volumes of music and exploring related artists can shed new light on old passions.
Apple Music offers an “infinite” music playback feature. Say you start playing an album. Apple Music will play related songs when your album is finished playing if this feature is enabled. These songs are based on the album you just played, your listening history, and any songs you mark as “loved.”
While listening to Apple Music, one often experiences new sounds. Users can “love” music by tapping an icon on their iPhone or telling Siri that they love the song. This lets the Apple Music recommendation engine know what you like, informing future automated playback.
How to Mark an Apple Music Song as Loved
Designating an Apple Music song as loved is easy and can be accomplished in a few ways. If you have “Hey Siri” turned on, simply say, “Hey Siri, I love this song.” This momentarily pauses the music as Siri replies, “OK, got it.” Unfortunately, this happens while you’re listening, making it less enjoyable. This is a great way to go if you’re listening to music in the shower, but sometimes Siri will reduce the volume after the interaction. It’s OK. You can request to turn it up.
If you can access your iPhone or iPad, the easiest way to love a song is to tap the “…” button next to its title. When the menu pops up, tap on the Love option, which has a heart next to it.
You can love an album, but for some reason, not an artist. Of course, if you love every album by an artist, Apple Music will get the idea. To love an album:
- Tap on an album cover to go to the album page.
- If you’re in the Now Playing view, tap on the artist’s name and pick “Go to Album” from the pop-up menu.
- Once the album screen appears, tap on the “…” icon on the top right of the screen, then tap “Love”.
If you already love something, you can unlove it by tapping in the same location. You can determine if you loved something because it will show unlove as the option.
How to Find Loved Songs
Unfortunately, Apple Music doesn’t offer “loved” songs in a playlist. This isn’t the purpose of loving a song. When you love music on Apple Music, you’re telling the recommendation engine to play more songs similar to what you love. I know this is both shocking and disappointing to some. I spent some time trying to find a list of loved songs which doesn’t exist. You’ll have to create a playlist to maintain a list of favorite songs.
You’ll need to change your behavior slightly if you want a playlist of loved songs. Instead of merely marking a song as loved, you’ll need to add it to a playlist too. I do this all the time. After a while, it becomes automatic. If you forget, you can usually go back in your listening history and love/add any songs you desire.
The first step is to create a playlist. Assuming you have Apple Music open on your iPhone, tap on the Library tab on the bottom. You’ll see the Library screen. Tap on Playlists. The Playlists screen appears. Now tap on “New Playlists…” to start the creation of a new playlist.
You can add art to your Playlist if you’re not in a rush. Simply tap on the camera icon and either take a photo with your camera or browse your collection for a relevant image. You can take a screenshot of any album cover in Apple Music, trim it down to the appropriate size, and use this as art for your Playlist. If you don’t pick anything, Apple Music will generate an image for your Playlist, which is essentially an album cover.
Next, give the Playlist a name. Tap on the Playlist Name field and enter a title. “Loved” is a good name, but you can call it anything you desire. Tap Done when you’re finished.
Now that you have a placeholder playlist, adding your favorite music is easy. The next time you listen to music and find something you love, mark it as loved as instructed above. Next, tap the “…” menu button again and add it to the Playlist you created by tapping “Add to a Playlist”. This shows the “Add to a Playlist” screen. From here, tap on the “Loved” Playlist you created earlier in this tutorial. You’ll see a translucent gray message box informing you that Apple Music added your song to the Playlist.
Enjoying Your “Loved” Playlist
Now that you’ve been loving songs and adding them to your “Loved” playlist, it’s time to enjoy your favorite music. With the Apple Music app open on your iPhone, tap on the Library tab. The Library screen appears. Next, tap on Playlists and then select “Loved”. The main playback screen of your Playlist appears. Tap on the “Play” button to enjoy your favorite songs.