How to create and share playlists in Apple Music

apple-music-playlist.jpg

Jason Cipriani/CNET

Apple Music offers a mishmash of features and capabilities. Some are easy to find, such as Beats 1 Radio. While others, such as creating and sharing a playlist are a bit hidden.

Creating a playlist is actually a simple process once you grasp the gist of how it all works. So how does it work? I’m glad you asked.


Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
  • After updating your iOS device to iOS 8.4, launch the new Music app. Along the bottom you’ll find some new buttons, one of which is My Music; tap on it.
  • Tap on the Playlist button found at the top of the screen.
  • Wading through the recently added songs and albums, along with other playlists you currently have, is a very small New button. Tapping on it does exactly what you think it’d do.
  • Give your playlist a name, add some songs, and a photo if you’d like. When you select a category to search, you’re given the option to search content available in Apple Music or music you own. If you want, you can skip adding a photo and let Music create a playlist icon for you based on the songs in the playlist.

Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
  • Once you’ve added a song to the playlist, a Shared Playlist button will appear. This option defaults to On, meaning you can send a link for others to add the playlist to their Apple Music account. Slide it to the Off position if you’d rather keep it private.

9 things you should try first with Apple Music (pictures)

apple-music-1.jpgapple-music-1.jpg

+7 more


See all photos

After you’re done curating the playlist, you can then save it and share your work by tapping on the familiar share button. Any changes you make in the future will result in the playlist updating across all devices it’s saved to. Meaning, if a friend saves your playlist, your changes will sync to his or her device.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear your friends can currently add songs to one of your playlists. Another important item to note: if you create a playlist that includes a song that’s not available in Apple Music (such as the Beatles), the song will be included in the share playlist but it will be greyed out for those who don’t also own the song. And for whatever reason, tapping on the song fails to direct the user to the iTunes store.

Check Also

14 Hidden iPhone Features You Should Really Know About

It’s been over half a year since iOS 16 was released to the general public, yet there always seems to be new features and settings to discover within Apple’s latest iPhone software update. Not all these unexplored features will be as popular as unsending texts and emails or cutting out objects from your photos, but they’re still worth exploring if …

Leave a Reply