Imagine if you were able to stream & listen to every single song on the iTunes Store for a small price ad free right from your iPhone.
Apple have made that a reality by announcing Apple Music, which brings unlimited music streaming to over 30+ million songs, radio stations including Beats 1 a 24/7 world-wide radio station by Beats/Apple, and ‘Connect’ – a way for artists to directly interact with their audience by sharing music, lyrics, videos & photos.
Apple Music: What is it?
In the words from Apple themselves Apple Music is:
A revolutionary streaming music service, a pioneering worldwide live radio station from Apple broadcasting 24 hours a day and a great new way for music fans to connect with their favourite artists.
For a small monthly fee you’ll be able to search from ‘tens of millions’ of songs that were on the iTunes Store and listen to them in full, ad free and even save them to your device. In addition, you can also listen to radio stations, watch music videos, and more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1zs0uHHoSw
It’s personalised experience, too, and from the get go, you’ll be shown songs, artists and albums that will likely interest you based on the previous music you’ve listened too, artists you follow and your favourite genres.
The big (and in my opinion important) difference between playlists, song recommendations & radio from Apple Music over other streaming services is they’re created by human from the team at Apple and Beats (Apple purchased Beats some time ago), rather than a computer doing the work. This creates the possibility to curate playlists, which are personal, offer an emotional connection – not just a sequence of randomly comprised music from an algorithm – and promise you’ll enjoy the next song as much as the song you’re listening to.
Apple Music: Radio
As I mentioned, you can search and listen to tens of millions of songs from Apple Music. However, another big way to listen and discover new music is via Radio.
Apple Music Radio incorporates Beats 1, broadcasting 24/7 out of cities around the globe giving you access to new music, exclusive interviews, guest hosts, and more.
Apple Music Radio on iPhoneThere’s a variety of radio stations from all around the world from different genres, charting stations and radio stations based on a song, album, playlist or artist you choose.
Apple Music Radio is part of Apple Music all built in the same app, just listen away by tapping ‘radio’ at the bottom and choosing a radio station.
Apple Music: Connect
Finally there’s ‘Apple Music Connect’ – a way artists can share anything from their latest song or album, to demos, lyrics, videos and photos directly to their fans – it’s all unfiltered and unedited by Apple too.
It’s not only the top artists either, its everyone from Lana Del Rey and Lady Gaga, right down to the upcoming artists making music from their bedroom.
Connect is a place where musicians give their fans a closer look at their work, their inspirations and their world.
Commenting and liking their posts is possible as well, however following artists on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram is all possible too with official artist accounts listed and linked right from the app.
FAQ
Australian release date
The biggest question is When does Apple Music come out in Australia?
The answer to this is officially ‘June 30th,’ with Apple Music launching in 100+ countries.
How much does Apple Music cost?
Apple have not officially announced pricing for Australia just yet (I’ll update this post when they do) but for now we can get a good idea from the US pricing.
Apple Music will cost $9.99/month in the US with a free 3 month trial for all including Australia! We’ll also have the option to sign up to a ‘Family Account’ which will allow up to 6 users in the same family.
How & where can we use Apple Music?
Apple Music is available from iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC, Apple Watch and even for the first time – Android.
It’ll arrive to iOS (iPhone, iPad etc) with an update to iOS 8.4 by the end of the month with Mac/PC arriving via an update to iTunes.
