“iOS 8.4 beta 3 was released into the wild yesterday and it brings both interesting new features and raises the stakes in the Beats streaming music mystery,” Gordon Kelly writes for Forbes. “The former is relatively straightforward. We see tweaks to the radically overhauled Music app with new fonts, an enhanced offline music mode which clearly denotes which tracks are downloaded and which are stored online, plus an enhanced search option which scans your music and that of iTunes radio.”
“Perhaps the biggest talking point in iOS 8.4 beta 3 is the ongoing absence of any hint of a Beats-based streaming music service,” Kelly writes. “For a long time iOS 8.3 was rumoured to include the long awaited Spotify rival, but having drifted to iOS 8.4 it is surprising that no test features or even code have given away its existence. There is still time the Beats streaming service to be dropped in there (Apple typically tends to do four to five iOS betas before official release) or for it to arrive via a dedicated event, but the lack of any telltale signs at this stage is surprising.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s not going to tip their hand this time.
For Apple to know and the blood hound media to find out.
One thing I really like about Spotify is subscribing to Hrh Tyler Waltz’s Alt-18 channels from Sirius/XM/Alt Nation/XMU.
Yes, I could manually create playlist is all music subscription services. But I really like how Spotify does it.
I hope Beats has similar features and the Alt 18 guys create shared playlist on Beats like they do over at Spotify.
I can’t even experience iTunes Radio yet.
It doesn’t appear on my iTunes 12.1 and my iOS 8.3
They may offer it as a dedicated (removable) app. Probably free, but there’s no reason as such it would need to be definitively part of iOS.
I really hope Apple can get this right as I find Spotify’s iphone app to be a poorly designed app. And I know about 2 years ago my son installed Spotify on my Macbook laptop and that thing was the worst piece of pc bloated crapware that would completely take over my laptop that I told him he’d have to use his sisters laptop if he wanted to use Spotify. They now have Spotify on the PS3/4 and it’s pretty stripped down and simplified so it suffices for now using it in on my PS3 but I’ve tried every streaming service out there including the much hoped for iTunes radio and haven’t found one I really like across all my devices. I’d even probably buy a Apple TV if they can get it right.
I’m really tired of hearing about “Beats” in the context of an Apple discussion. The purchase of this trashy company was a waste of billions of dollars. Steve Jobs never would have made such a purchase. If acquiring Jimmy what’s-his-name were somehow to their advantage, they could have done that for far less, and without having to buy some crappy headphones and an illiterate rapper.
Beats owns 64% of the headphone market and is extremely profitable. The brand is incredibly popular among young people. It’s critical that Apple maintain a foothold in music and maintain its “cool”. It’s also critical to their long-term plans to strap computers to your body. Expect Beats Headphones and Apple Watch to integrate in very interesting ways in the near future. With Apple Watch, Apple has your wrist. With Beats Wireless Headphones, Apple has your ears. All that’s left to conquer is your eyes.
And as an aside, you’re just calling Dr. Dre “illiterate” because you don’t like black people. He’s an extremely successful and accomplished business man.
Please cite your market statistics. How is it possible for Beats to have 64% of the headphone market in volume or in sales when every device maker includes a pair of headphones in the box? Even if you are speaking only of aftermarket headphone sales, it sure doesn’t appear that Beats has that kind of market share by our observation. Most people I know can’t stand having those big plastic cans on their head.
I would submit that if Apple needed Beats in order to be “cool,” one may well wonder how Apple ever became cool in the first place.
As for Beats headphones: they’re trash.
As for that rapper guy you’re in love with, he’s “successful and accomplished” for the same reason that Barack Obama is “successful and accomplished”: BECAUSE he is black. Put the same guy in a suit of white skin and he’s ringing up Slurpees at 7-11.
While I would say that Beats headphones are overpriced for their lack of quality, the Beats Music service is as good or better than any other music service I have tried to date including Pandora, Spotify, and yes, iTunes Radio. For $9.99 per month you get access to most music (20 million plus songs) at 320k. I am currently an iTunes Match subscriber and have enjoyed having access to my music library anywhere, but having recently tested the 2 week free subscription to Beats Music, I am converted. It gives me access to the majority of what I already own, and the radio service is infinitely better than iTunes Radio or Pandora, and slightly better than Spotify. The app is gorgeous and the curation is top notch.
Yep, I tried the 2 week free Beats trial and was hooked. It’s like having access to the entire iTunes music store. All-you-can-eat. When you no longer have to pay per-song, you end up downloading a lot more music.
And BTW, it’s $9.99/month if you pay monthly. It’s $8.25/month if you pay yearly.
Money wasted on buying a dodo by a bunch of dodos.