Apple on Monday announced its long-rumored streaming music service. Known as Apple Music, the service will make downloaded and streaming music available in one place and include a global radio station alongside what can perhaps be best described as an Instagram / Twitter mash-up called Connect.
It starts with Apple Music where subscribers will have access to their entire downloaded music collection alongside Apple’s catalog of over 30 million tracks. Like the competition, Apple is touting human curation as a major selling point for its new service.
Siri can help members find very specific songs or playlists with ease. For example, it’ll be possible to have Siri queue up the current top 10 rock songs, play tunes from May 1982 or even play a specific song from a movie soundtrack (“play the song from Top Gun”).
The global radio station, called Beats 1, will air live out of New York City, Los Angeles and London and will be hosted by Ebro Darden, Zane Lowe and Julie Adenuga, respectively. Listeners from around the world will hear the same programming simultaneously, be it a mix of popular tunes, exclusive interviews, guest hosts and more.
Apple Music’s Connect feature, meanwhile, was conceived by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. Connect is simply a platform that allows artists to connect with fans via content sharing. It can be anything from backstage photos, lyrics to a new song they’re working on, videos and so on. Fans can like / comment on the content and share it on social media if they wish.
Apple Music will be available starting June 30 on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and PC (coming this fall to Android). Pricing is set at $9.99 per month or $14.99 per month for a family of up to six listeners. To get started, Apple is issuing a free three-month trial.
