Apple Music: Streaming Service Unveiled – Tech Announcement

 

Apple has announced its long-awaited music streaming service, promising subscription access to tens of millions of tracks.

CEO Tim Cook revealed Apple Music – seen as a rival to the likes of Spotify – at the company’s annual developers conference.

“It will change the way you experience music forever,” Mr Cook told the audience.

Users will be able to stream songs or save them for offline listening.

Apple Music will also feature a 24/7 global radio station called Beats One, broadcasting from LA, New York and London.

Former Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe is one of the figures involved in that project.

Apple Music will also recommend songs.

The company boasts the suggestions will be curated by the “world’s leading music experts”, rather than relying solely on a computer algorithm.

The price in the US will be $9.99 (£6.50) per month, with the first three months free. UK pricing has not yet been announced.

Unlike Spotify, it will not offer a free service supported by adverts

It launches on Apple devices on 30 June in more than 100 countries, and on Windows and Android devices in the autumn.

A Connect feature, designed to let musicians share photos, music and other updates with fans, is also a key part of the service.

Apple Music will appear as an update to the existing Music app on iPhones and iPads.

Rapper Drake and Beats headphones co-founder Jimmy Iovine were among the music industry big-hitters who appeared on stage to promote the new service.

Apple bought Beats Electronics and online music streaming service Beats Music for $3bn (£1.8bn) last year.

The San Francisco event also saw Apple announce that its Pay system is coming to the UK in July.

It means people will be able to tap their iPhone, Apple Watch or iPad to instantly purchase goods.

More than 250,000 individual outlets will support the system, including M&S, Costa, Waitrose, the Post Office and Boots.

The system will work with nearly 70% of UK credit and debit cards by the autumn.

HSBC, NatWest, Santander, TSB, Lloyds, Nationwide and Royal Bank of Scotland are among the banks on board.

Passengers on London’s transport network will also be able to use it to pay for travel.

Apple also revealed the new version of its Mac operating system, El Capitan, and announced a raft of new features for its latest mobile operating system, iOS9.

These include split screen apps for iPad and a more intelligent Siri ‘personal assistant’ that Apple says is 40% faster and more accurate.

Apple’s recently launched Watch is also getting a boost.

Apps will now able to run ‘natively’ on the watch itself, rather than a linked iPhone doing most of the work.

The company says it will allow developers to come up with more sophisticated, powerful apps that take full advantage of the device.

Apple’s news aggregation app was also shown off at the San Francisco conference.

It curates a personalised version of the news based on a user’s interests and will launch first in the UK, US and Australia.

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