April 28, 2003: Apple opens the iTunes Music Store, revolutionizing the music industry and digital distribution of content.
At a time when getting music online mostly means illegal downloads from pirate services like Napster, iTunes quickly proves that customers will pay for songs — provided the service is good enough.
Apple Music vs. Spotify: While Apple Music still lags behind Spotify when it comes to paying subscribers, in my opinion, Apple Music is the better service. It offers more advanced features like live lyrics, karaoke, lossless and spatial audio.
And for music aficionados, you can upload your own ripped recordings and MP3s. You have full control over your music library. Plus the Apple Music Classical app gives you a first-class experience learning and discovering classical music.
Here are the nine things keeping me on Apple Music — and why you should switch away from Spotify. You can also watch the video right here.
If you like working, sleeping, relaxing or meditating to ambient music — and you own an iPhone — you’re in luck. You can now play background tunes from Control Center on your iPhone. The feature is ad-free and doesn’t require a subscription to Apple Music.
If you usually put on a lo-fi music stream on YouTube, you should give this new feature a shot instead. You don’t need to keep the YouTube app open, and annoying ads won’t interrupt you.
Here’s how the iPhone’s ambient music feature works.
In a major enhancement to Apple Music for Windows PCs, Apple rolled out support for Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio. This long-awaited feature brings the immersive audio experience that Apple users have enjoyed since 2021 to the Windows platform for the first time.
March 30, 2006: A court case begins that once again pits Apple Computer against Apple Corps, aka The Beatles’ record label and holding company.
The lawsuit caps a long-running legal battle between the two wealthy companies. It’s the final fight in an epic legal battle over music, technology and money.
As Apple TV+’s subscriber base continues to grow and the streamer enjoys lots of attention on Friday’s Severance season 2 finale, a new report Thursday suggests the streaming service remains a financial loser for the iPhone giant — to the tune of $1 billion in losses annually. And yet it should come as no surprise Apple TV+ bleeds money.
A fat billion a year in the red sounds bad, but it’s pretty much in line with the plan for losses of up to $20 billion over a decade for the still-nascent streaming service.
Apple Music Classical is a new app for iPhone specifically designed as a great experience for browsing and listening to instrumental music. Its catalog of 5 million tracks has been carefully curated and tagged by composer, work, movement, instrument, orchestra, artist and more.
Why does there need to be a separate app for classical music? Apple says it succinctly on its support page: classical music “has longer and more detailed titles, multiple artists for each work, and hundreds of recordings of well-known pieces.” This app “is designed to support the complex data structure of classical music.”
This is how to discover, find, add and listen to music in Apple Music Classical.
The new Music Haptics accessibility feature in iOS 18 adds another dimension to audio: vibration. Taking advantage of the incredible precision of the iPhone’s Taptic Engine, the feature brings to life a specially recorded track of rhythmic vibrations and buzzing patterns timed to certain Apple Music songs.
Switch it on, and you can hold your iPhone in your hands and feel your music in a whole new way. Keep reading to see how the feature works (or watch our video that explains it all).
For a limited time, Apple is running a promo offering six months of Apple Music subscription for just $2.99. That’s just $3 for six months, leading to substantial savings.
Without the promo, new Apple Music subscribers would have to pay $10.99 monthly for the streaming service.
With hip-hop icon Kendrick Lamar taking center stage at the Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show on February 9 at New Orleans, Apple kicked off the artist’s Road to Halftime festivities Monday.
“Throughout his career, Kendrick Lamar hasn’t met the cultural moment so much as he’s defined it,” said Rachel Newman, Apple Music’s global head of content and editorial. “He is an artist’s artist — authentic to his core. We couldn’t be more thrilled to watch him headline the third Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show, in what’s sure to be another moment we’ll all be talking about for decades.”
Apple TV and Apple Music will stream the upcoming FireAid benefit concert to help victims of the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles, a new report Thursday. The concert lineup so far includes Billie Eilish, John Mayer, Lady Gaga, Sting and many others.
The concert will rock out in two Los Angeles performance venues near each other, but most people will get to see and hear it via streaming services.
To help expedite recovery in response to deadly Los Angeles wildfires, Apple gives users simple ways to help LA wildfire victims by linking donation pages in popular apps directly to the American Red Cross, CEO Tim Cook said in an X.com post Wednesday. This follows the iPhone giant’s own donation of an undisclosed amount as well as considerations extended to wildfire victims regarding their Apple Card payments.
In a big shake-up at smart speaker maker Sonos — whose high-end audio products are popular with Apple users — CEO Patrick Spence resigned effective immediately and a board member will step in as interim CEO, the company said Monday. Spence’s departure comes after a turbulent 2024 that saw the company struggle with a controversial app redesign, disappointing product launches and declining customer satisfaction.
iOS 18.2 will make searching on Apple Music and Apple TV much easier with natural language support. This means you can use natural language to describe and search for TV shows or music you are looking for.
The revamped Photos app gained support for similar search capabilities with the iOS 18.1 update.
Apple Music has a karaoke mode for people who love to sing along as they listen. Apple Music Sing lets you turn down the lyrics so you can karaoke to your favorite hits with just one tap.
In fact, I’m using it right now to listen to some of my favorite music without the lyrics distracting me from reading and writing. Let me show you how it works!
Apple Music named Billie Eilish Artist of the Year for 2024 on Thursday. That makes her the first artist to receive the honor twice. The 22-year-old singer-songwriter previously won the inaugural award in 2019.
“Since day one, Apple Music has supported my music and artistry, and I am both honored and humbled to receive this recognition as Artist of the Year this many years into my career,” Eilish said.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: So … many … M4 Mac reviews! Griffin tells us why the new Mac mini and the updated iMac make him go gaga. And the faster MacBook Pros are no slouches, either.
Also on The CultCast:
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.
Back when Apple Music put out its 100 Best Albums of all time list, some people expressed shock at the No. 1 pick — 1998’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. And now they might be shocked they’re being asked to pay a whopping $450 for a fancy-schmancy, limited-edition coffee-table book version of the whole list. That seems like an Apple move, doesn’t it? But if you’re into it, act fast — only 1,500 copies exist.
However, before you do … you know you could buy an M1 or maybe an M2 Mac mini with that $450, right? Just sayin’.
Songs disappear from Apple Music all the time due to licensing problems or artists doing controversial things. Spotify found itself caught up in similar situation in 2022, losing Neil Young’s discography in a protest of the streaming service’s association with podcaster Joe Rogan. Luckily, there’s a way you can find out if any songs in your library have been removed from Apple Music behind your back.
If you own a Mac, you can quickly find out by building a special Smart Playlist. I’ll show you how.
A hot feature of Apple Music playlist collaboration. In advance of a party, road trip or any kind of themed event, you and others organizing the music can build a playlist together.
This isn’t to be confused with a similar feature, SharePlay, which lets people in the same room add songs to a live queue. SharePlay is more ephemeral; it lets others nearby play songs in the car or to a Bluetooth speaker without passing around your unlocked phone.
A shared Apple Music playlist is saved and can be replayed at any time. To find out everything you need to know about Apple Music playlist collaboration, keep reading or watch our quick how-to video.
iOS 18 is getting a bunch of cool new accessibility features this year, including bringing eye tracking to the iPhone for the first time. You also can feel haptic music, control your phone with custom voice commands, use your phone in the car without suffering from motion sickness, and improve the accuracy of Siri and dictation.
Check out our video to see it in action or keep reading below.
The Apple Music Classical streaming service now includes over 50,000 album booklets featuring in-depth liner notes, translations and more.
These provide music aficionados with the in-depth information they want.
In a surprising move, Apple is making it easier to transfer your playlists from Apple Music to YouTube Music. This is the first time the Cupertino company is offering a tool like this for Apple Music users.
If you are an Apple Music subscriber, the tool makes transferring your playlists to YouTube Music easy.
You can find new music on the Apple Music Discovery Station, which gives you a tailored playlist to suggest new artists and jams you’ve never heard before but should like based on your personal musical tastes.
Personalized recommendations have long been a reason people cite for sticking with Spotify over Apple Music. But you can add the Discovery Station to my list of eight reasons you should make the switch. Apple Music offers personalized music picks, too, and the system works great.
I’ll show you where to find Apple Music’s Discovery Station and how to make the most of it.
iPhone users could use AI to create their own artwork for playlists in Apple Music, according to code reportedly found in the latest iOS 18 beta. The feature would use Apple Intelligence’s ability to generate images based on simple instructions.
If true, this is be one of multiple new artificial intelligence capabilities coming to iPhone.