3 fun and useful music streaming features I've been checking out this week

Spotify Lossless may have grabbed the headlines in the music streaming world this month, but there are other popular streaming services and apps that have recently unveiled plenty of useful features that are designed to enhance your listening experiences.

Apple Music and Qobuz have cool new features in their respective apps – one focuses on evolving personalised recommendations, while a major software update introduces clever shortcuts, as well as a nifty lyric translation and pronunciation feature. In the hi-fi world, the BluOS control app – used with Bluesound, NAD, Cyrus and Dali streaming products – has a less showy but significant update for regular power users.

I've been exploring some of these new features this week, so here is a rundown of the most interesting updates from each platform.

Qobuz redesigns its Discover page and offers personalised Daily mixes

Qobuz has revamped its 'Discover' home page in the mobile app, which is now sectioned into 'Home' (everything), 'Editor's Picks' and 'For You' tabs.

The 'Editor's Picks' tab showcases new releases, playlists, albums of the week and more that are 100% human-curated selections by Qobuz's team of music experts. The 'For You' tab is more personalised to your listening tastes, and evolves as you listen. The Weekly Q recommendation playlist (which refreshes every Friday) is now joined by a new Daily Q playlist that is populated every day using Qobuz's recommendation engine.

Qobuz's editorial team also throws in a few surprises here, so it's not entirely algorithm-led. This means you'll get left-field suggestions that feel out of place if you're more used to Tidal and Apple Music's mixes, but it's great to see Qobuz offer more options for personalised playlists and tailored music to regular users.

You can also save Daily mixes as a playlist so that a great selection isn't lost the next day.

Additionally, there's a new Release Watch feature that highlights new releases from artists and labels you follow (Qobuz encourages you to follow more to make this more useful). And finally, a Spotlight feature focuses on one of your favourite artists, encouraging you to take a deep dive into their discography and peruse any related magazine content written by the Qobuz team.

iOS26 grants Apple Music a bundle of new features, including lyric translations

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I just updated my iPhone to the latest iOS26 software and with that came a whole bunch of new Apple Music features. The menus and sub-sections have been given a fresh makeover in line with iOS26's 'Liquid Glass' concept, which results in a layered, more reactive and 'bubble-y' interface that works pretty well.

It's all rather slick, although I'm still getting used to the menu tabs disappearing when scrolling, and the search bar being at the bottom of the screen. There is also now a shortcut to open an artist's page in Apple Music Classical.

An AI-powered AutoMix feature is much hyped, which supposedly makes DJ-style smooth transitions between songs by matching beats, although I didn't find that this worked successfully in my existing (and carefully curated) playlists. The transitions between songs sounded a bit mushed, but perhaps I need to try another way.

I do like the ability to 'pin' certain albums and tracks at the top of my library, though.

One new feature that has impressed me is that you can now opt to see translations and pronunciation guides alongside the original lyrics. This means I now know exactly what they're singing, and how to pronounce the Korean lyrics, in the mega-successful KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack. The font and layout are neatly done, and easy to follow along with the song.

Note that this feature isn't available for all songs – for instance, Edith Piaf's La Vie En Rose and Kneecap's tracks all display their respective native French and Irish lyrics only. You'll need to look out for the little translation icon to see if it's available for any given song, and you can choose to show (or hide) either the translation or pronunciation, too.

Queue up songs and create playlists more intuitively with this helpful BluOS update

It's not just music streaming services that are offering new features; multi-room streaming and control app BluOS has added a 'Queue Builder Mode' that lets you queue up songs on the fly more easily, as well as edit, build upon and save these queues as playlists, without interrupting your music listening.

BluOS is the streaming platform for plenty of the best music streamers and hi-fi streaming systems, including models from Bluesound, NAD, Cyrus Audio, Dali and more. So if you have any one of the excellent streamers that use this platform – such as the Bluesound Node, the Cyrus 40 ST or NAD C 3050 – and enjoy building custom playlists, then this feature should be worth updating the app for.

This new mode "simplifies the way users build queues and playlists". When this mode is activated, you can add tracks as you're browsing (simply tap the plus sign to add to the queue) through connected services within the BluOS Controller app. You can even combine tracks from different streaming services here – it's a feature we are keen to try out when we next update the five-star streamers we have in our test rooms.

You can get the Queue Builder Mode in the BluOS 4.12 update, which also brings the all-important Qobuz Connect integration for supported models.

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