“At its Worldwide Developers Conference starting Monday, Apple is expected to unveil its push to change how people buy and listen to music,” Daisuke Wakabayashi reports for The Wall Street Journal. “Apple aims to counter the slowdown in music downloads — a business it pioneered more than a decade ago with iTunes — with a new subscription-based streaming service and an ad-supported online-radio offering.”
“Apple is expected to announce a $10-a-month service that will let users listen to any song or album they choose—as if they had an iTunes library with tens of millions of songs. It is also expected to revamp its free online-radio efforts with a battery of channels programmed like traditional radio stations, featuring high-profile personalities,” Wakabayashi reports. “The company is expected to promote the service with a lengthy trial period and a major advertising campaign.”
“The new music strategy is one of many announcements expected at the annual conference that draws about 5,000 Apple partners and outside developers to the Moscone Center in San Francisco,” Wakabayashi reports. “As in most years, Apple will use the event to unveil new features of its iOS software for iPhones and iPads, as well as its Mac operating system.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: No push required here. Just tell us where to sign!
In a few short hours the speculation will be over and many people will say… ‘Yes, that is exactly what we were looking for’
Many others will say “It’s just a copy of ( insert rival service here )”, “so and so does it better”, “these other people did it first”, “Apple is making too much profit and ripping off the artists” and of course “Apple is doomed”.
It doesn’t matter what Apple introduces, the same comments get trotted out every time. I suspect that many of the comments have already been written and are ready to paste into a newspaper or blog.
Not interested in ad supported anything and not interested in renting music.
Even less interested in “celebrity” internet radio stations. Centrally programmed radio is what essentially killed Rock in the U.S. A station in Chicago sounded different and broke different acts than a station in Memphis or Boston or Los Angeles.
Then Lee Abrams came up with superstars format and homogenized Rock radio.
As a musician, I’m hoping for a wider market so us little guys can get in, those of us already on iTunes anyway, and hopefully something will be thrown our way.
If what Apple offer is a service that takes note of your musical tastes and then plays you music which you’re most likely unfamiliar with, but will probably like, then it bodes well for smaller bands.
You might play in a band that sounds a bit like Ed Sheeran meets Nirvana ( unlikely, but just giving an example ). Whenever a listener shows a liking for one of those bands, you might also get played. If a listener likes both bands, you are even more likely to get played to them.
Many of you might have noticed that the iTune Genius mix will often find music within your collection which you had forgotten about, but you liked it when it was played again. Curated streaming that takes note of your musical tastes will do the same sort of thing, but with a range of music that you probably have never heard before, but are likely to enjoy.
Take a moment everyone to look at that “Joy of Tech” cartoon in the sidebar. It s very amusing: sunny day, all these anthropomorphic figures of existing streaming services (Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, etc) excited about a beautiful day at the beach, not seeing a massive Apple tsunami…
I have a strong suspicion that Apple’s service will be fairer to the artists, more flexible and transparent for the users and essentially solve all problems existing today in distribution of music. If any of Steve Jobs’s mindset is left at Apple, it will succeed.
For me it’s a non-starter if not available offline. Using up cellular data for high-quality playback will not go over well. Hopefully they will match Spotify’s premium capability (with better catalog!)
If they offer a free trial, I’ll be there for that, up until it’s over, when I’ll be gone.
The ‘Match’ must stay. I won’t pay $200/y, just to stream my music.
Aaah, wouldn’t it be $120?