Apple Watch users can finally listen to Spotify music without an iPhone. This is a boon to runners, and continues the trend of making Apple’s wearable more independent.
Spotify enjoys strong growth, with the number of paid subscribers to this streaming music service up 29% year over year. At last report, rival Apple Music wasn’t growing so strongly.
More Americans pay to listen to Apple Music than Spotify. The Swedish company had been ahead since the iPhone maker got into the streaming music business back in 2015, but Apple finally closed the gap. And its growth is continuing to outpace its rival in the US.
Spotify still has many more paid subscribers globally, however.,
Last week there were reports that Spotify is coming to Apple Watch. It’s definitely happening, with video of an early beta appearing online.
At this point, however, basic functions are missing from the pre-release software for the streaming music service.
Apple has been trying to buy Shazam since last December, but the deal has been held up for months by regulators in the EU. That’s reportedly just about to change.
It’s likely Apple wants this music-identification app as part of its ongoing battle with Spotify.
U.S. telecoms try to lure new customers with free streaming services. Verizon has teamed up with Apple to offer half a year of Apple Music at no additional cost.
What’s even ore interesting is that the wireless provider calls this “just the first step in an exclusive partnership with Apple.”
Streaming music has revolutionized the way we listen to music on the go. Starting with streaming radio, and quickly evolving to carrying millions of songs in your pocket (thanks to cellular data), streaming services have enabled incredible access and discovery of great music.
With Spotify, you can experience your favorites and discover great new music better than ever, thanks to algorithmic intelligence and some genius features.
Freeloaders who use YouTube as a cheap alternative to Apple Music should get ready to be annoyed. YouTube is about to intentionally irritate users who treat the video site as a jukebox by increasing ads between songs.
The goal? Driving subscriptions to an as-yet-unannounced paid YouTube music service.
Things happen in cycles, and portable music is no exception. After records, tapes and CDs came the iPod. The iPod shuffle took the form of a small, screenless clicker. With the dawn of streaming services, portable music storage became less relevant — or so we thought.
Apple’s big idea for transforming the way we experience music is bringing a personal touch — and a simple, unified platform — to the tangled technological mess that music’s become in 2015. Apple Music is classic Apple: putting a human face on technology that threatens to overwhelm us.
Tim Cook brought out high-profile artists, and Apple’s team of industry insiders, to show off what he called “the next chapter in music” today at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
“I know your are going to love it,” Cook said, introducing Apple Music. “It will change the way that you experience music forever.”
Here’s what Apple Music will bring to your ears.
Although we’ve heard vague reports about it, all’s been quiet on the Cupertino front about Apple’s plans to relaunch its Beats Music streaming service later this year — possibly as early as February.
Today another piece of the puzzle may have fallen into place, however, with the news that Apple has acquired U.K. startup Semetric, which runs the Musicmetric analytics tool, designed to allow music labels to track sales, BitTorrent, YouTube, Spotify and social-networking data for their artists.
I used to love Pandora. For a time you could use it in Canada and I paid for a subscription right away. Sadly, Pandora doesn’t work up here. Now for the rest of you lucky sots you can enter to win a Pandora One subscription for life.
Interested?
Sony is bringing its Music Unlimited service to iOS devices in the next three months. The Spotify-like service has been available on Android and PC devices, but Sony is looking to expand to the App Store.
