Recent updates to the various versions of Apple’s operating system include some great music-oriented features in both Maps and Apple Music, but they’re strangely hard to find. Here’s how to use them to find concerts, playlists, and places to see your favorite artists.
Along with the release of iOS/iPadOS 16.5 and macOS Ventura 13.4, Apple also launched new concert discovery features in Apple Maps and Apple Music aimed at encouraging music lovers to get out and support live music. Maps has added more than 40 new guides, curated by Apple Music editors, highlighting some of the best places to listen to live music in the top 10 cities around the world.
Within these Guides, it’s possible to display upcoming shows from these venues via Apple’s Shazam app, which in turn introduced the concert listings feature last spring through a connection to another music discovery app on Alive, Bandsintown. The problem is that finding the guides that are geared towards music and their concert listings is a bit tricky, and because this is a new feature, the number of artists featured so far is quite small.
In addition to Guides, Apple Music now has a new semi-hidden feature called Set Lists, which shows songs that certain artists perform on their latest tour and playlists of the official versions of those songs. From there, users can also browse the schedule of upcoming shows, but again, in its debut, the Set Lists feature has a very small list of artists.
Music guides in Apple Maps
For those who have never used the Guides feature in Apple Maps, you can find them on the Mac by clicking the search box and then scrolling down. Depending on where you are, you may see a Guide for your city or a large city nearby, and from there, you can click “See All” to access all currently available Guides.
On iOS or iPadOS, the Guide feature is a bit more hidden. Type the name of a major city in the search box, scroll down and you will see the Guide for that city and the option to see more Guides.
Most guides on Maps cover the top attractions, cultural features, and history of a given city, with many major cities and capitals around the world included. You can also create your own personal guide covering your favorite places for any city you’ve been to, including your own reviews.
A typical guide for a major city.
There are two quick ways to find Apple Music Guides. The first is to go into the Apple Music app, scroll down until you see a section called “Discover more from Apple Music” and tap on “Live Music Guides in Apple Maps” which redirects you to the Maps app and opens the Guides of music. .
Alternatively, you can open any web browser and visit apple.co/MusicVenues (yes, .co not .com), which will open Maps and take you directly to the Music Guides. iOS 17, which is set for release later this year, may make it easier for these guides to appear in Maps.
The new feature originally debuted with just ten cities as Guides, but Apple has already added a few more. The current list includes Berlin, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Mexico City, Nashville, New York, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, and Vienna, along with a list of notable locations in California and New York.
Some of the Music Guides are dedicated to specific music genres in certain cities (Classical, Acoustic, Jazz & Blues, Alternative, Queer, Hip-Hop). There are also some guides covering essential places, dance clubs, DIY spaces, and some guides to historical places.
The Berlin classical music guide on iPhone
Set playlists in Apple Music
Again, Apple hasn’t yet found a way to make this new feature more obvious within the Apple Music app, but this could change in iOS/iPadOS 17 and macOS 14. So far, the only way we’ve found to get to it within the Apple Music app itself is to search for “Playlist” (two words, no “s” at the end) and it eventually shows up as a category in the top results, along with some of the artist-specific Playlists featured. .
Alternatively, you can access the feature indirectly by opening any web browser and typing, then dialing, apple.co/setlists. This opens the Music app and takes you to the Set Lists category page.
Currently, only eight artists appear on the Set Lists, but all of them are quite popular: Blink 182, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Taylor Swift, Featherweight, BlackPink, Kane Brown, and Beyonce. Clicking on their name will take you to a list of songs performed on the current tour.
To be clear, these are not live recordings of recent concert songs; they are the standard studio versions of songs on Apple Music known to have been performed on the current tour. Any given performance may deviate a bit or include other numbers as well.
The main Set Lists page also has a button below each artist’s Set List link that allows fans to search for upcoming shows. These are the same lists that appear in the Shazam or Bandsintown apps.
Set listings can also show where upcoming shows are taking place.
If you want to see a list of upcoming shows by venue, you can do so through the Music Guides in Apple Maps for a specific venue. You can also use the Bandsintown app.
These new features are in their early stages right now, but if Apple can find a way to make them more obvious and add a wider range of artists who are touring, they could be very useful for fans who want to experience live concerts. from your favorite artists. Hopefully, upcoming OS updates this fall will make them more visible and useful to fans of all tastes and ages.
