Apple Ambient Music

The new iOS 18.4 has an unbelievably wonderful, unprecedented — and somewhat hidden — feature.

Ambient Music!

There are four buttons you can activate in the 🎛️ Control Center that provide endless ambient music in four styles and for four purposes:

• ☀️ Relaxation
• ☑️ Focus & Productivity
• 💙 Well-being
• 💤 Sleep

The compositions and arrangements are of high quality and very satisfying. They are purely instrumental, with little melodic variation but rich in textures, sound effects, rhythm, and sound design. If voices appear — rarely — they are only used to add texture, without words.

I am an avid listener of ambient music and use it to block out external noise, enter my inner world, focus, relax, find inspiration, and fall asleep. Collections like Buddha-Bar, Café del Mar, Le Café Abstrait, and their curators have been in my ears for many years, introducing me to many artists I now love and follow. Unlike Apple’s new Ambient Music, these collections also include more ethnic styles.

But there’s something obscure and noteworthy about Apple Ambient Music. There are no song titles, no artist credits, no album covers. Music identifiers like Shazam don’t recognize these tracks—I’ve tried multiple times. I haven’t noticed any repeated songs, and they all last around three minutes. It’s as if they were commissioned for this purpose, following specific rules. I also haven’t found any Apple page describing the technology, the source of the collection, or how the curation of the four playlists works.

This leads me to believe the music is dynamically generated (both composed and performed) by artificial intelligence or some algorithm. The fact that the tracks have little melodic richness — melody being the most valuable, human, and difficult-to-create musical feature — supports this hypothesis. A well-built library of textures and sound effects, combined with fine-tuned algorithms, could make this possible.

But this raises a very serious ethical question, especially when the feature is made so accessible and mainstream. Could AI replace composers, musicians, and sound engineers in some musical styles? Could this explain why Apple isn’t making a big deal out of this feature, despite it deserving the spotlight?

Apple Ambient Music is now part of my listening repertoire.

Also in LinkedIn.