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Apple Sneaks Animated Artwork into Some Apple Music Albums

By Laura Tucker
Apple Music Animated Artwork Featured

This could become a really cool feature or could become too much fanfare about nothing. Some macOS and iOS users have found that the recent version of Apple Music is featuring a few albums with animated artwork. It’s a fun little thing, but it has only been found on a couple of albums. Will there be more?

iOS 14.3 and macOS 11.1 Surprise

It’s not an entirely new idea for Apple Music. Last summer the beta version of iOS 14 introduced some animated playlists. Not in the ones you create but in the ones that are cultivated especially for you: Favorites Mix, Get Up! Mix, Chill Mix, and New Music Mix. It has also been found on other Apple playlists, such as “Party Starters.”

Five months later, now that the beta of iOS 14.3 has been released, some users found animated artwork on Apple Music albums. That’s not all. It’s also in Apple Music on macOS 11.1. Interestingly, it has not shown up yet on iPadOS 14.3. But perhaps that will be in a forthcoming release.

Apple Music Animated Artwork Pearl Jam

One of the albums featuring the animated artwork on Apple Music is “Gigaton” by Pearl Jam. It’s also shown up on “Detroit 2” by Big Sean and “12 Questions” by Future Utopia.

These are very simple animations but still fun. On the Pearl Jam album, it’s showing up as moving water. On Big Sean’s album, musicians are seen rising into the sky. Future Utopia’s album has moving parts on a really busy piece of artwork.

How Far Will this Go?

Since the albums the animated artwork has appeared on are three very random artists and recent releases, that makes it appear that it is the option of the artist of whether to include the animation as a digital feature – or at least an option of whomever is designing the album artwork – and not Apple Music. It seems to show that record labels were given prior notice of the feature and took advantage of it.

Apple Music Animated Artwork Big Sean

It will be interesting to see which artists decide to include this feature on their releases. This makes you wonder, if the animations are available on some Apple playlists as well as some albums, will animations be offered elsewhere in Apple Music? Will it show up on iPadOS?

Perhaps there will be GIFs used for your favorite artists. Maybe it will extend to singles. Perhaps users will be able to create their own. Sure, it’s not groundbreaking but stuff to make getting through the day a little easier.

Are you a Spotify user and thinking of switching to Apple Music? Read on to learn how the two services compare.

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Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

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