Okay the title is a tad dramatic, but hear me out…

Before

I uninstalled Apple music from my phone a few months ago, since I do most of my streaming on Spotify. All was well

I had spotify docked (that bottom row that appears on every page), as illustrated below:

After

Here’s where the fun starts, I reinstalled Apple music, and Spotify, which was docked, got replaced by Apple Music, without my intervention. That previously docked Spotify icon was also sent to the last page

What if another app is by the bottom right corner

I thought the behaviour of moving around icons would persist, regardless of what app was docked where. But here’s what happened when I had a different app in that corner

Before music installation

After Music installation

As you can see, the messages app remained untouched, and the Apple Music icon was added to the last page, and not the dock.

This is not Apple music vs Spotify

If the dock is full, and that last spot is taken up by an App that’s not developed by Apple, it will get replaced by Apple Music.

Then again

This pattern could be a data backed, sensible default🤷🏽‍♂️Apple is good at that.