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Apple is quietly killing off Apple Music's Connect social features

Artists will no longer be able to make posts and old content is being removed.

Apple Music Connect appears as though it's on its way out. Apple has started to notify artists that they will no longer have the ability to post content to the social network-style service build into Apple's streaming music platform, according to 9to5Mac. Previously shared posts are also being removed from the "For You" section and artists pages hosted in Apple Music. For the time being, posts will still appear in search results within the app, but those will be removed come May.

While Apple hasn't explicitly spelled out the end of Connect, it sure seems like that is the inevitable outcome at this point. The company has updated its support documents for Apple Music to reflect that Connect posts from artists are "no longer supported." Seeing as getting artists to share personal posts was one of the primary purposes of Connect, there won't be much reason to preserve the feature.

Apple hyped up Connect as a way for artists to have a more personal relationship with their fans when it launched Apple Music in 2015, but the feature has fizzled. Most artists haven't been active on the platform, and Apple has been pushing Connect out of the spotlight for years. In 2016, the company removed the dedicated tab for Connect from the Apple Music app and relegated posts from artists to the very bottom of the "For You" section, which provides listening recommendations. User-to-user social features like sharing playlists and seeing activity likely aren't going anywhere, but it seems like 2019 could be the year the social tools for artists in Apple Music Connect finally goes the way of iTunes Ping.