New Apple Music Voice Plan

One small surprise is the official debut of the new Apple Music Voice Plan with iOS 15.2. Apple announced the new plan during its October Unleashed event, but didn’t announce a date beyond “later this fall.”

Since it’s now the second week in December, we’re quickly approaching the end of fall, so we knew it had to be coming sooner or later, and it looks like Apple was just waiting for iOS 15.2 to provide the necessary underpinnings to support it.

This is likely necessary as Apple Music Voice Plan subscribers will get a more simplified user interface in the Music app, likely directing users to make all of their requests via Siri. There’s no support for lyrics, video content programming, social sharing features, or your personal iCloud Music Library.

In fact, it’s not even clear if you’ll be able to manually search for and browse Apple Music content. Apple’s release notes make it pretty clear the whole thing is driven by voice requests, stating that users will get “access to all songs, playlists, and stations in Apple Music using Siri,” and that a new “Just Ask Siri” feature will be used to suggest music based on your listening history.