Music is deeply ingrained in the iPhone experience. With features like Apple Music, an integrated Music app, and Siri integration, listening to your favorite songs and discovering new artists is a core part of using an iPhone. According to Apple Music revenue statistics, the service generated over $8 billion in 2022 and now has 88 million subscribers as of June 2022. But what happens if you try to remove the Music app from your iPhone?
This article will explain the effects and potential downsides of deleting the Music app on your iPhone. While it is possible to remove the app, doing so has implications for accessing your music library, using streaming services, listening to radio stations, and leveraging Siri. We’ll go through these repercussions to illustrate what you’d be missing out on if the Music app disappeared from your Home screen.
App Removal Basics
To delete an app from an iPhone, you simply touch and hold the app icon until the context menu appears. Then tap “Remove App” and confirm deletion by tapping “Delete” (Apple Support). The app will be removed from the Home Screen and App Library. However, deleting the Music app is irreversible and the only way to restore it is by wiping the iPhone and restoring from a backup (Apple Support).
So in summary, while deleting apps on iPhone is straightforward, special consideration should be given before removing Apple’s default apps like Music, since they cannot be redownloaded from the App Store. Once deleted, the only option is a full iPhone restore.
Loss of Music Library Access
Deleting the Music app on your iPhone will mean losing access to any music you’ve purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store or Apple Music. Without the Music app, there is no way to listen to or access that previously purchased content on your device.
Any music you’ve purchased through your Apple ID is still saved in your account’s purchase history and can be downloaded again on other devices or if you reinstall the Music app. But as long as the Music app is deleted from your iPhone, you won’t have access to stream or play that purchased music library directly on that device.
Alternatively, you can access your purchased iTunes music library from a computer using the iTunes application. You can also use iTunes to manually sync purchased music to your iPhone for playback even without the Music app installed. But iTunes syncing requires connecting your iPhone to a computer and isn’t as seamless as accessing purchased music directly from the Music app.
So in summary, deleting the Music app prevents easy access to any music purchased through your Apple ID on that iPhone. You’d need to use iTunes syncing or reinstall the Music app to restore access to purchased content on your device.
Impact on Streaming Services
Deleting the Music app does not directly affect your ability to use streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. These are standalone apps that function independently from the preinstalled Music app.
You can continue using Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music and other streaming services as normal after deleting the Music app. The key difference is that you will no longer be able to access or manage streaming content directly within the Music app itself.
For example, Apple Music subscribers currently can view recommendations, add songs to their library, and control playback all within the Music app. Without the Music app, Apple Music users would need to perform these actions in the separate Apple Music app instead.
According to Music Streaming Market Share and Revenue Statistics, Spotify has the largest market share at 31% followed by Apple Music at 15%. Other major players include Amazon Music at 13%, Tencent Music at 13%, and YouTube Music at 8%.
In summary, while deleting the Music app takes away integrated streaming features, you can still fully utilize leading music streaming services through their standalone apps.
Missing Media Playback Features
The Music app provides many useful media playback features beyond just playing songs, including playlists, shuffle, repeat, queue management, and more. Apple designed the Music app to be a full-featured media player for the iPhone (source). Playlists allow organizing songs into custom mixes, like workout music or favorite tracks. The app can shuffle songs or repeat the current playlist. Users can browse and edit the play queue on the Now Playing screen.
In contrast, many basic third-party music apps have limited playback controls. For example, they may only allow playing/pausing and skipping tracks without robust queue management or shuffle options. Losing the Music app means losing the specialized media playback tools designed for iPhone. Third-party apps often won’t integrate as tightly with iOS for control from the lock screen or Today View (source). The Music app provides the most feature-rich iOS media playback experience.
Loss of Siri Integration
Deleting the built-in Music app on your iPhone will cause you to lose all Siri integration and voice control capabilities for music playback. Siri offers convenient hands-free commands for controlling music on your iPhone, such as:
- “Hey Siri, play some jazz music”
- “Hey Siri, turn up the volume”
- “Hey Siri, skip to the next song”
- “Hey Siri, pause the music”
Without the Music app, Siri will no longer be able to play music or understand any voice commands related to music playback. This can be a major inconvenience if you frequently rely on Siri to start playlists, change songs, adjust volume levels, etc. while driving or when your hands are full.
One potential workaround is to use a third-party music streaming app like Spotify. The Spotify app has its own Siri integration, so you can set it as your default music player. Then commands like “Hey Siri, play my Discover Weekly playlist” will launch Spotify instead of the default Music app. However, you may find the Siri integration less robust compared to Apple’s own Music app.
No More Radio Stations
Deleting the Music app will result in the loss of access to Apple’s curated radio stations within the Radio tab. This includes flagship stations like Apple Music 1 that offer genre-focused DJ shows and exclusive interviews with artists. Without the Music app, you’ll no longer be able to tune into Apple’s human-curated radio stations.
Compared to algorithmic streaming radio stations offered by Spotify and others, Apple’s radio stations provide more of a lean-back listening experience with shows hosted by music experts. While streaming services allow you to start radio stations based on artists, songs or genres, the experience differs from Apple’s handpicked DJ shows and segments. Losing access to the Radio tab represents a downgrade in curated radio listening.
Impact on Storage Space
Deleting the Music app can free up a significant amount of storage space on an iPhone, especially for users with large music libraries stored locally. According to discussions on Apple’s forums, the Music app can use up to 197GB of storage for users with extensive music collections downloaded to their device. The average size of a song is around 10MB, so it’s easy for music to quickly eat up storage space.
However, the storage gains from removing Music may be limited for some users. Those who primarily stream music or rely on Apple’s Music in the Cloud feature, which stores songs in iCloud rather than locally, will likely only see modest storage savings. Additionally, any music purchased through iTunes that is downloaded again later will re-consume that storage space. Still, deleting Music can be an effective way to quickly free up significant storage if large music libraries are consuming storage needed for other apps and data.
Other App Considerations
Deleting the Music app only removes the Music app itself and does not delete other native media playback apps on iOS. According to Apple’s list of default iOS apps, the Music app has a bundle ID of “com.apple.Music” while other media apps have separate bundle IDs [1].
After deleting the Music app, other native media apps like Podcasts, TV, Photos, Camera, Voice Memos, and Books remain on the device. Additionally, the Clock app with access to alarms, timers, and the world clock is still available. Users also retain the App Store for downloading additional media apps if desired.
In summary, deleting the Music app only removes that particular app, leaving other native media playback functionality intact.
Conclusion
In summary, deleting the Music app on your iPhone will have several impacts:
- You will lose access to your entire Apple Music library stored locally on your device.
- Streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify will still function, but you won’t be able to access your synced libraries or offline downloads.
- Media playback features like system-wide control and background audio will stop working for local music files.
- Siri integration for music requests and voice control of music playback will be disabled.
- Apple curated radio stations will no longer be available.
- You will gain back storage space equivalent to the size of your local music library.
Overall, I do not recommend deleting the Music app unless you are certain you do not access any local music files, stored playlists, or other music features on your iPhone. For most users, the benefits of keeping the Music app outweigh the downsides. You can disable or remove content within the Music app selectively to save storage space instead of deleting the entire app if needed.