Apple finally announced the its much speculated music streaming service named simply, Apple Music, at the WWDC conference on June 8. This is Apple’s first foray into music streaming, a landscape that is dominated by incumbents such as Spotify, Rdio and others. Apple Music was announced on stage by veteran record producer and Apple employee Jimmy Iovine.
Apple Music will be priced at $9.99 (approx Rs 640) per month and to get users hooked on to it, Apple Music will be free for the first three months. For a family plan for up to 6 accounts Apple Music will cost $14.99 (approx Rs 960). The service will be launched in over 100 countries by June 30. Also Apple Music will be coming to Android operating system by fall.
Apple Music service will concentrate on three main parameters: discovering and downloading music, the Beats 1 radio service and Connect feature. On your first login, Apple Music will ask you for your favourite genres followed by favourite artists. This will help the service suggest playlists, created by Apple experts, based on your music listening patterns. Apple Music will provide unlimited swipes for songs.
One of the major additions to the service will be Siri integration. You can speak out commands including natural language commands such as ‘Play me the top song from 1990′ or ‘Play me more songs of Eminem’ or ‘Play me music similar to Porcupine Tree’ and Siri will suggest the correct songs from its servers.
Beats 1 will be the radio service associated with Apple Music. It will start off with three 24/7 radio stations which will be broadcast globally from locations such as New York, London and Los Angeles.
Finally Apple wants listeners to get behind the scenes with the artists as they are producing their music. Connect feature lets listeners follow their favourite artists who can put up pictures from recordings, record live sessions, post images of lyrics, upload audio clips of jamming sessions and so on.
“Through Connect you can comment on or like anything an artist has posted, and share it via Messages, Facebook, Twitter, and email. And when you comment, the artist can respond to you directly. It takes the connection you have with music to a whole new level,” says the product page.
Apple has burned its hand with the now-dead Ping social network it tried to popularise with music as the starting point. Let us see how the second outing goes about.
