Chance Miller details the new Music app from the first developer beta of iOS 8.4, which was released earlier this week. The application sports a refined user interface and some new features — a recently added section, Up Next, redesigned artist screen, and more.

This was a bit of an unexpected release from Apple (at least from my perspective). This is the kind of update that I would have thought to be bundled in iOS 9 not 8.4. I wonder if the days of monolithic iOS upgrades are behind us and Apple will be more willing to ship major application upgrades mid-cycle in the future. It would certainly be an interesting way to reduce the sticker shock from multi-gigabyte iOS updates that are such an annoyance for 16GB device users.