To a ‘whooping’ audience inside the Moscone Center in San Francisco Apple just put its stake in the ground annoucing Apple Music. The future of music will costs under £10 a month in the UK and it promises to be everything you’d ever want to listen to in one place.
First thing’s first, Apple music is essentially “iTunes the next generation”. Apple Music takes the 30 Million+ songs currently in iTunes and has them available on-demand and in the Apple Music cloud, where you can search for and stream any song available in the library.
Apple Music also combines music you’ve purchased along with related music you haven’t and of course there is a powerful search engine to help you find and discover new songs and artists – something their latest TV adverts have pushed towards.
Siri’s comes in as a big part of the interface: You can ask Siri to play your favourite Smiths single, that song from that film you watched in the cinema, or a playlist of best songs from 2007. As displayed at the launch of the iPhone 6S (along with new Apple TV) Siri is a lot more assertive and the most vague questions can be met with a swift search and find for exactly what you’re looking for.
As Apple Music takes a step forward, it also looks to the past and launched Beat 1, a 24/7 global radio station that will broadcasts from Los Angeles, New York and London and is put together by former BBC Radio 1 presenter Zane Lowe. Since the announcement of broadcasting from London, rumours of a UK return have been denied by Lowe who told the Guardian Newspaper that he will be fronting the operation in LA.
The radio show features music and interviews with top stars, along with all the latest entertainment news.
Another new aspect of Apple Music is the company’s first big move in to social media. Apple don’t have a Facebook, Twitter etc but with Connect, bands can up load their own content including music, pictures and videos in a platform that sounds reminiscent of the early days of MySpace. In typical social media fashion, users can ‘like’ and comment on all the artists content.
Apple music will is available on the app store now for just £9.99 a month, with a 3 month free trial.
