iTunes had changed the way people purchase and consume digital music. With the rise of new music services such as Spotify, Apple is now introducing Apple Music, which offers an “all you can listen” ad-free music experience including offline for a fixed monthly subscription.
Interestingly Steve Jobs didn’t believe in the subscription model and this is a big shift from its current approach of selling songs ala carte by track or album. Back in 2003, the Apple co-founder once said that subscription music services were going to fail and people won’t buy music as a subscription. “When they want music, they bought 45s, LPs, cassettes, 8-tracks, CDs and then they are going to buy downloads”, he said in an interview.
The Apple Music service costs US$9.99 a month per user, and there’s a family pack bundle of US$14.99 that covers up to 6 users in a household. As a promo, the first 3 months subscription is free. As comparison, its direct competitor Spotify’s premium ad-free service costs US$9.99 in the US and RM14.90 with 1 month free trial in Malaysia.
On top of that Apple has revamped its streaming radio offering with the big names of music curating these stations. One of such stations is BeatsOne, a 24 hour streaming station that’s handled by DJs like Zane Lowe, Ebro Darden and Julia Adenuga.
To complete the music service, there’s also Connect, a social platform that connects artists to their loyal fans. In short, it is like a micro blog where fans can subscribe to, to get the latest updates, and even get first hand access to the latest albums.
Apple Music will be available starting 30th June across 100 countries and it will be rolled out with its upcoming iOS 8.4 update for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Not leaving anyone else behind, it will also be available for Windows and Android users this Fall, which is in Q3 this year. As Apple Music comes pre-installed in every new device running iOS 8.4 and above, Apple hopes that more users would jump on board its subscription service especially with its free 3 month subscription offer. If you’re a Spotify premium user, would you jump over to Apple Music?
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