Apple pulls the plug on Apple Music Connect

Apple Music Connect, a feature that lets artists publish posts of their own to give fans and followers a closer look at their work, their inspirations and their world, is getting discontinued.

Apple announced yesterday that Apple Music Connect will basically suffer the same fate as iTunes Ping, its ill-conceived social network for music fans that was killed off on September 20, 2012 because it never really took off in a meaningful way.

In announcing the upcoming changes via a support document, the company wrote that “Connect posts from artists are no longer supported”. Artists will no longer be able to publish to Connect and their posts are getting removed from the For You section and artist pages.

Existing Connect posts will continue to be accessible and viewable through search results on Apple Music until May 2019, when Apple is scheduled to remove them permanently.

Apple’s letter to artists frames the shutdown as “streamlining music discovery.”

Here it is in its entirety:

We’ve made a few changes to Apple Music that we’d like to tell you about.

We’re always looking for ways to enhance our focus on artists and help them better connect to fans. So we’ve given Artist Pages an all-new design and added new, personalized Artist Radio.

Today we’re streamlining music discovery by removing Connect posts from Artist Pages and For You. This means you’ll no longer be able to post to Connect as of December 13, 2018, but all previously uploaded content will still be searchable until May 24, 2019. You can still create Artist Playlists with the latest version of Apple Music.

With Connect, Apple Music subscribers could view and follow streams by their favorite artists, as well as like and comment on their posts and more. While artists initially embraced Connect, the feature saw less traction from musicians than Apple had anticipated.

Connect used to have a dedicated, albeit short-lived tab in the Music app

And as artists stopped pushing Connect content on a regular basis, Apple eventually killed a dedicated Connect tab in the Music app and burry the section below music recommendations and personalized playlists in the For You tab.

With Connect out of the picture, the Cupertino technology giant is now doubling down on improved organization of artist pages, which now include an Essential Albums section along with a featured release at the top of each artist’s page.

Another useful change permits Apple Music artists to now have their own radio station based on music from across their own catalogs. Listeners can easily tune in by tapping an icon at the top of any artist page to start listening to music from across that artist’s catalog.

I haven’t really used Connect much so I won’t be missing it.

How about you?