Apple confirms Apple Music's rebrand, with a logo shaped by soundApple confirms Apple Music's rebrand, with a logo shaped by sound

Apple officially introduced a new brand identity for Apple Music on 21 October 2026, with a new logo, a heavier wordmark and a short signature sound. Its visuals were made by playing music through a liquid and filming the ripples.

For anyone who uses Apple Music, the change arrives on their own devices with iOS 27.2 and macOS 27.2, which MacRumors expects the following week. The red that has marked the service for years gives way to black and white.

How Apple made the logo

Apple explains the process in a film on YouTube. 9to5Mac reports that Apple says the result was captured entirely in camera.

Adweek describes the rig. Apple's agency, TBWA\Media Arts Lab, set a transducer in a shallow bath of mineral oil and filmed the waves. A transducer turns an audio signal into vibration.

heise adds that a curved pane of glass sat in the tank. MacRumors describes the liquid as water; Adweek and heise both say oil.

The music came from the British producer Fred again.. with NEST Acoustics, a sound design studio, according to Apple Music's own post on X.

The same sound becomes the service's audio signature: heise describes a short intro in which the app icon turns into the wordmark inside a sound wave. Until now only Apple TV had one, composed by Finneas, heise notes.

The wordmark itself pairs the Apple logo with a customised, bold lowercase version of SF Pro, Apple's own typeface, Adweek reports.

From a venue website to an announcement

Putting our own coverage in order shows how gradually this arrived. The heavier wordmark appeared in September on the website for Apple Music Hall, the Battersea Power Station venue that also hosts Apple and The King's Trust's Creative Labs workshops.

On 5 October it turned up inside iOS 27.2 beta 3, and on 13 October beta 4 turned the app icon black and white and took red out of the Music app. The release candidate followed on 19 October, and the official story two days later.

When we wrote about the logo in beta 3, we expected it to reach everyone with iOS 27.2, and that now looks right. When the icon changed in beta 4, we thought feedback on how hard a colourless icon is to spot might bring red back. The announcement settles that: black and white is the brand, not a beta experiment.

What a designer notices

Our view is that Apple has moved recognition from colour to motion and sound. A red square was easy to find on a home screen. A black and white one relies on its shape, and on a short sound of its own.

That trade suits a service that lives on televisions, Android phones and concert hall walls as much as on an iPhone.

The liquid ripple also ties the brand to Liquid Glass, the translucent look Apple brought to iOS 26. The logo now behaves the way the interface does, bending light, rather than sitting on top of it as a flat badge.

There is nothing for listeners to do. Libraries, playlists and subscriptions are untouched. We read Apple's Apple Music page after the announcement, and it did not yet mention the new identity. We expect the website to change alongside the apps.

The sources do not say whether the new sound will play inside the Music app or only in Apple's marketing. That is the thing to listen for when iOS 27.2 is released.