A love for music is one of the ways that Apple Music has always set itself apart from the competition. While Apple undoubtedly makes a great deal of money from its music streaming service, it’s more than just a business for the company — there’s a particular passion behind it.

In some ways, that shouldn’t be surprising. With its late entry into the streaming side of the music game, it’s easy to forget that Apple was the company that first revolutionized the digital music business with the launch of the iTunes Store in 2003. It was also Steve Jobs’ famous 2007 open letter, Thoughts on Music, that pushed the music labels to drop Digital Rights Management (DRM) copy-protection for purchased music tracks.

Even in the modern streaming era, Apple continues to enjoy a great relationship with artists. It’s been hailed as a “friend to songwriters,” happily paying fair royalties that add up to nearly twice as much as Spotify while rival streaming services try to claw more money back into their own pockets.

That same enthusiasm for music across all genres also drives Apple to build new experiences for fans to enjoy. Apple Music was the first mainstream service to offer an entirely lossless catalog at no extra cost to subscribers, and earlier this year, it launched Apple Music Classical to provide a curated and focused experience for classical music aficionados to properly enjoy a genre that’s traditionally been neglected by streaming music apps and services.

Discovering Live Music Experiences

As many more people get ready to enjoy a summer where the COVID-19 pandemic is finally well in the rear-view mirror, Apple has announced that it’s bringing new features to Apple Music and Apple Maps to help you find live shows for your favorite artists and genres.

This isn’t just a glorified version of Ticketmaster, either. Apple has taken its Guides feature that was introduced in Apple Maps a few years ago and added 40 new Guides that have been “expertly curated by Apple Music editors” to help music fans find “the best venues to experience live music in some of the world’s leading culture hubs,” whether that’s techno clubs in Brooklyn or Viennese symphony halls.

Apple is once again building on its 2017 acquisition of Shazam for this feature to pull in upcoming shows for all those venues directly in Maps from the concert discovery module it added last spring, which leverages its partnership with “the world-renowned event recommendation and artist discovery platform,” Bandsintown.

The Shazam feature introduced last year would provide relevant concert information, tickets, and tour dates for any songs you searched out in the app, and now Apple is tying that in with its Apple Maps Guides and into a new Set Lists space in the Apple Music app.

For artists on major tours, the new area offers a selection of set lists that will be performed on tour, plus a list of upcoming shows and background info on the productions. Fans can find more information on the shows in their area by launching Shazam’s concert discovery module directly from the Apple Music app.

The new Apple Maps Music Guides are rolling out in ten cities over the next few weeks, including Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York City, and San Francisco in North America; Berlin, London, Paris, and Vienna in Europe; Tokyo, Melbourne, and Sydney in the Asia-Pacific region; and Mexico City in Latin America. Apple Music’s Set Lists are available now, starting with tours for a half-dozen artists, including Sam Smith, BLACKPINK, Peso Pluma, Kane Brown, blink-182, and Ed Sheeran.