A German website called Mobile Geeks has posted what it says are screenshots of Apple Music for Android and is reporting that Apple is currently conducting a private beta test with Android users.
This is only the second time that Apple has released an app for Android (excluding Chomp), the first being their “Move to iOS” app that got pummeled by some hilarious reviews on launch day.
For the most part, the functionality is identical: Beats 1 Radio, access to the full Apple Music catalog, and a surprisingly strong recommendation engine.
But Apple has also included a few features not available on iOS, like the ability to change the size of the cache for songs saved for offline playback. No word on whether Android users will be able to determine the location of that cache, which would be interesting for those using SD cards to expand storage.
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Perhaps most interesting is the weird “translation” of an iOS app on an Android platform. (Reading about it in a bad Google translation from German only heightens this strangeness.) Rather than try to recreate a complete iOS feel, Apple’s redesign uses lots of Android UI elements like a slide-out sidebar navigation and the much-ballyhooed hamburger menu. This is a departure from other “translations,” like Google’s YouTube iOS app, which adheres strictly to the company’s Material Design framework, with no attempt to blend into the iOS look and feel.
Apple has said that the Android version of the app will debut in the fall, and these screenshots seem to back that up.
Apple CEO Tim Cook recently mentioned that Apple Music now has 6.5 million paying subscribers, subscription numbers which are down from a peak of 11 million during the introductory 90-day free trial.
