Apple unveiled a new Apple Music logo Wednesday that’s shaped by sound waves rippling through mineral oil. And yes, it’s real. Not AI. Not even CGI.
It’s the first major overhaul for the streaming service’s logo since its launch back in 2015. The new look is expected to arrive with iOS 27.2 next week.
Apple Music logo started as ripples in mineral oil
Apple Music is a very popular subscription-based streaming service, offering access to a catalog of more than 100 million songs, along with curated playlists, live radio stations and exclusive content. Subscribers can stream music on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV and other supported devices.
Apple announced the service’s rebrand in a Wednesday post on X, saying the look was “physically shaped by an original composition” from British producer Fred again and Nest Acoustics.
A behind-the-scenes video called “Made by Sound” shows how the team broke the composition into individual notes. Each note was played through a transducer, a device that turns audio signals into physical vibrations.
These vibrations rippled through a shallow bath of mineral oil, with cameras filming the logo bending and stretching through the liquid. Apple says the video makers were able to capture everything on camera.
But it wasn’t easy. Too many notes, or notes that were pitched too high, made the oil move so much that the image became completely unreadable. To fix this, the team had to tune the music and the visuals together. This reportedly took months.
The rebrand goes beyond the logo
The same musical composition also doubles up as Apple Music’s new sonic signature, meaning the logo and its sound now match. The app icon changes as well. The familiar red icon is now going black and white, a change that showed up in iOS 27.2 betas — drawing a considerable amount of criticism.
The Apple Music wordmark also got a makeover recently. It pairs the Apple logo with bold, lowercase lettering that’s based on a custom version of SF Pro — Apple’s own typeface. The new wordmark first appeared in September, when the company launched Apple Music Hall, a 600-person venue at London’s Battersea Power Station.
As for the crazy mineral oil and sound treatment, Apple took a similar approach when it rebranded Apple TV last year. For that, the company filmed a giant Apple TV logo made out of glass, colorfully lit in a studio, with no CGI involved.
The new visuals will open Apple Music videos, which also include concert footage and original content.
