Apple Music: Huge overhaul to reduce importance of ‘Connect’ social features when it is unveiled at WWDC in June

Connect was a major part of the Apple Music launch, and was supposed to let people follow posts from their favourite artists – but it is being demoted, a year later

Apple CEO Tim Cook with Beats by Dre co-founder and Apple employee Jimmy Iovine at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Monday, June 8, 2015 (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Apple Music is to ditch its social features as part of an overhaul expected later this summer.

The first details of the new redesign are leaking ahead of the anticipated reveal at this year’s WWDC in June.

At Apple Music’s launch in June last year, Connect featured heavily as a way of allowing people to follow their favourite musicians through the app. But customers are making little use of it, according to reports.

The feature’s fate mirrors that of Ping – a social network that was added to iTunes in 2010, but never really took off and was killed a couple of years later. That was Apple’s only other real effort to launch a social network.

Connect works as a feed of posts by artists, who can send out pictures or new songs to fans who follow them. Users themselves can’t post updates, but can comment on those from other people.

It had previously sat in its own tab at the bottom of the app, alongside its other headline features. But it will now be demoted into a separate menu – a move that some users had already made.

Many of the features will continue to exist, so that people can still follow artists and see new posts. But they will be promoted much less.

And there will be no new features added to the app during the expected overhaul, according to 9to5mac, which first reported the changes.

That redesign will otherwise bring a new, more simple look to the app as well as changes including lyrics support. The new design has been in the works since February, according to 9to5mac.