Apple Music’s new wave logo was physically ‘made by sound’

By Grace Kim

Apple Music has unveiled the first rebrand of its identity since the service launched in 2015. Its new wave-like logo was physically generated from sound, vibration and mineral oil, Apple says.

The identity will appear across Apple Music’s marketing. Apple unveiled the logo and an additional musical-note icon in October 2026. It also gave the visual system an early public appearance inside the Apple Music Hall in Battersea, London.

Apple describes the rebrand—a redesign of a brand’s visual identity—as an effort to give the service a distinctive sound and a logo “made by sound.” “For the rebrand of Apple Music, we wanted sound to create the visuals,” Apple said. “How do we take this idea of music and distill it into something visually beautiful?”

How did sound become a logo?

Apple’s rebrand video documents a four-stage physical process:

• Fred Again and NEST Acoustics created the musical frequencies.
• An application-icon-shaped piece of plastic sat in a shallow pool of mineral oil.
• A transducer—a device that converts one form of energy into another—turned the frequencies into physical vibrations.
• The vibrations moved the oil and produced the wave-like effect used in the logo.

“Essentially, the idea was to create the perfect sound wave,” Apple said. “We take a frequency and we play it through a rig. This rig then moves a large amount of liquid at the frequency of the notes.”

Apple said the collaboration with Fred Again supplied the notes for the final mnemonic, a brief sound used to identify a brand. The company then used that sound to create the visuals. The process makes the image’s source explicit: a musician’s frequencies become mechanical movement, then a graphic form.

Alongside the wave, Apple revised the logo’s lettering. The M in “Music” became lowercase when it sits beside the Apple icon. The wordmark now uses a custom, entirely lowercase and bold version of the SF Pro typeface. Apple says these changes align the service’s identity with its wider visual system.

The physical method also creates a deliberate contrast. Digital design and artificial intelligence sit at the forefront of creative processes, while Apple used sound, vibration, plastic and oil to make this mark. The rebrand therefore treats production process as part of the design story rather than an anonymous manufacturing detail.

The identity was teased on 23 September 2026, when Apple unveiled the Apple Music Hall in Battersea, London. Apple placed the new logo on a wall inside the venue. Its industrial aesthetic matches the renovated power station containing the hall, connecting the service’s visual identity to a physical music setting.

What does this change for Apple Music users?

Apple’s announcement documents a visual rebranding and reports no changes to the catalogue, playback or product features. For users, the practical change is the appearance of the service: a new wordmark, a wave motif and a separate musical-note icon across marketing and the London venue.

The rebrand also gives Apple a more specific origin for the mark. Instead of presenting the wave only as a graphic device, the company can connect it to Fred Again’s notes, NEST Acoustics’ collaboration and the movement of oil.

For Apple, the next test is whether that origin stays legible when the logo moves from the sound rig to billboards, screens and the wall of the Apple Music Hall. If the wave and custom lowercase lettering remain coherent across those settings, a brief experiment with oil and sound will have become a usable brand system.