Apple Music unites streaming, radio and social for $10 a month
It's finally here. Well, it will be soon, but at least the announcement is official. At WWDC today, Jimmy Iovine revealed Apple Music: the long-rumored music service that follows the purchase of Beats last year and it provides all of your music content in a single app. That's a streaming service, radio, album purchases and more all in the same place. Yes, you read that correctly: radio. Apple will offer live radio 24 hours a day with stations that are curated by real humans -- like Beats Music's playlists. What's more, over 30 million iTunes songs will be available for streaming or saving for listening offline. There are recommendations based on your listening habits too, but instead of using some algorithm to find something you may like, experts "who know and love music" will serve up the suggestions. For artists, Apple Music has Connect where they can post exclusive tracks, tour photos, new material and more, giving fans a glance at what's going on behind the scenes. So, what about unsigned artists? They can share music through Apple's new effort, too.
When you open up the new app, you'll be greeted with a collection of your recently added tunes for quick and easy access. The software's UI got a refresh over the player that's in iOS 8 now, with a cleaner look and simplified controls. Once you start playing a song, a single tap lets you browse the rest of iTunes for other albums/songs from the artists. Just like Beats Music -- we're talking exactly like it -- Apple Music takes some of your preferences in the For You section and selects tracks based on your input. If the app finds something you like, you can add those tracks to a playlist for later. And yes, music videos are available here, too. If you're a big fan of using Siri to pick songs, you'll be able to do that with Apple Music. The virtual assistant can pick tracks based on the year of release, artist or chart position for a given month and year (April 2012, for example). During the demo, though, when asked to play songs from the movie Selma, Siri pulled the band Imagine Dragons instead.
If you're itchin' to give it a go, you'll have to wait until the end of June. On the 30th, you can try Apple Music for free for three months, but after the trial period, expect to pay $10 a month. Like Spotify, Rdio and others, there's a family plan that allows up to six people access for $15 a month through iCloud Family Sharing. There's no word on an ongoing free tier like Spotify, Pandora and the like offer. As you might expect, the service will be available on iOS first, but it's heading to Android and Apple TV this fall. It'll be available in over 100 countries at launch, equipping iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and Windows devices with the music-streaming repository and content at the end of the month.
