Forget $9.99 per month — Apple might slash the price of Apple Music subscriptions to better compete with streaming music rivals, most notably Amazon.
According to a new report, Apple could drop monthly subscription prices by as much as 20 percent. The Apple Music price drop would mean a regular subscription would cost users around $7.99 per month, while a family package would go for $12.99.
Apple can’t make enough iPhone 7 devices to satisfy demand from customers (and from Wall Street to make more money).
During Apple’s Q4 2016 earnings call today, Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri hinted that big things are in the pipeline that should put the company back on track to growth — and it all starts Thursday with the MacBook Pro.
Here’s what we learned from the Q4 earnings call:
Beats co-founder and Apple employee Andre Young, aka Dr. Dre, allegedly hired a hitman to kill Suge Knight, according to a lawsuit filed by Knight.
The former hip-hop mogul who co-founded Death Row Records claims Dre tried to have him murdered because Knight was owed a $300 million payout after Apple’s $3.4 billion acquisition of Beats Electronics in 2014. That deal made Dr. Dre the first billionaire in hip-hop.
Drake is following up on his album Views, which became the first album to hit one billion streams on Apple Music, with a new song collection, scheduled to debut on the service in December.
Entitled “More Life,” Drake announced the collection during his Sunday night “OVO Sound” show on Apple Music’s Beats 1 radio station.
Watching television is still a dreadful experience, according to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior VP of internet software and services.
The Apple exec sat down for a joint interview with HBO CEO Richard Plepler at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit in San Francisco today. The two media titans discussed the rapidly changing landscape of television, but Cue told the audience that more changes are needed to make the experience better.
Apple should take a note out of Jeff Bezos’ playbook and launch an Amazon Prime-style subscription service, claims an analyst for Goldman Sachs.
“We think Apple should launch a subscription bundle as a way to reinforce iPhone loyalty and leverage it into content,” Simona Jankowski writes in a new note to clients. In the brief, Jankowski and colleagues ponder the potential of a $50 monthly subscription that would get customers the latest iPhone plus other services like Apple TV, Apple Music and freemium access to the iTunes library.
An early preview of Apple’s redesigned London store reveals lots of new plants, simplified shelves and tables, as well as untethered iPhones and iPads that visitors can pick up and carry around the store.
Apple’s flagship Regent Street store, closed since June for the major remodel, is set to reopen Saturday. Early photos and a video tour show off the retail outlet’s uncluttered new look.
Apple’s newer adverts have tended to fall into either the comedy or moody art school genres. However, in its fight to grow Apple Music it just released a more traditional feature showcase ad, laying out the abilities of the “all-new” Apple Music.
Check it out below.
Apple Music has a new competitor in the form of Amazon, which today launched music streaming service Amazon Music Unlimited.
The premium service carries the same $9.99 monthly fee as Apple Music for regular users, although Prime customers get a reduced $7.99 monthly charge — while owners of the Amazon Echo can use an Amazon Music Unlimited subscription through the standalone device for a mere $3.99 per month.
Apple Music remains a long way from being a finished product, according to Apple executive and Beats Electronics co-founder Jimmy Iovine.
In a new interview discussing the struggles of building a product that fuses the worlds of tech and music, Iovine revealed that the company wants to build a product that is more than just a utility for accessing your music or getting a weekly playlist.
Apple Music and Spotify have started offering users access to unofficial, user-uploaded music remixes, courtesy of a deal with Dubset Media Holdings.
The company uses algorithms to sort out licensing and royalty payments for musical remixes. It’s an incredibly complicated problem to tackle, since a single remix might have upward of 600 different rights holders.
iOS 10 now has a larger install base than iOS 9, just over two weeks after making its public debut. Apple’s latest software has now reached 48.16 percent of all devices, while iOS 9’s share has dropped to 47.79 percent.
The first ever J.D. Power music streaming satisfaction survey found that Apple Music is the most liked streaming service in the U.S.
Spotify didn’t even manage to crack the top 3 in the survey that polled over 4,000 subscribers to music streaming services to gauge how well each company performs when it comes to performance and reliability, ease of use, cost, content, communication and customer service.
Shortly after last night’s presidential debate, Apple Music published a teaser for an Apple Music exclusive conversation between Hillary Clinton and Mary J. Blige.
The interview promises to get up close and personal with Clinton, and to address some hard-hitting subjects like police brutality. And it’s available exclusively to Apple Music subscribers.
Apple hit a huge milestone this week thanks to Drake’s latest album, Views, which just became the first album to hit one billion streams on Apple Music.
Apple CEO Tim Cook made it a point to personally toast Drizzy on his accomplishment, and presented a plaque to the singer/rapper alongside VP of Service Eddy Cue.
Apple Music is starting to look more and more like a record label, and it appears the company plans to double down on artist exclusives with the hiring of former Epic Records executive Scott Seviour.
Apple Music is having a big impact on the profitability of the music industry, according to a new report from the Recording Industry Association of America.
How big? Apple Music is one of the key players driving what looks to be the recording industry’s first back-to-back yearly growth since 1998-1999.
Hot off his genuinely hilarious skit with Tim Cook at the start of the recent iPhone 7 media event, James Corden is back alongside Apple executives for a new ad for Apple Music.
Playing himself, Corden pitches various off-the-wall concepts for an Apple Music ad, to more and more bemused reactions from Apple execs Jimmy Iovine, Eddy Cue and Bozoma Saint John.
Check it out below.
Jay Z and Apple aren’t going to be joining forces anytime soon, according to Apple Music head honcho Jimmy Iovine.
In a new interview, Iovine poured cold water on Tidal takeover rumors, saying: “We’re really running our own race” and “we’re not looking to acquire any streaming services.”
Apple Music doesn’t appear to be slowing Spotify’s growth at all, based on the number of paid subscribers the rival streaming service has added in 2016.
During the iPhone 7 event, Apple boasted that it has 17 million paid subscribers. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek fired shots back on Twitter this morning, revealing his company has more than twice as many paid music listeners.
September 14, 2005: Apple embraces exclusive music releases by debuting a digital EP from Coldplay on iTunes, featuring four previously unheard tracks from the enormously popular band.
100% of profits from the charity EP go to support victims of Hurricane Katrina. However, Apple’s ability to broker exclusive music deals with major record labels and popular artists shows that the company’s current exclusives-driven Apple Music strategy stretches back more than a decade.
Apple’s iOS 10 update for iPhones and iPads is the biggest software refresh the iPhone-maker has launched in years, adding a host of major and minor new features that completely change the iOS experience.
I’ve been using beta versions of iOS 10 on my iPhone 6s and iPad Pro since June. While some of the high-profile additions to Messages, Photos, Apple Music and Apple News aren’t totally mind-blowing, the smaller tweaks make all the difference. With iOS 10, using Apple’s devices is easier, faster and far more enjoyable than ever.
This is the big iOS update you’ve been waiting for, but not for all the reasons Apple thinks.
And they’re off! Less than 24 hours into the life of the iPhone 7, we’ve seen our first deal on it (sort of). You’ll find this surprising buy — plus the iPhone 6s, Apple Music and more — in this week’s best Apple deals.
CarPlay hasn’t taken off quite as quickly as Apple hoped for, but if you’re in the market for a brand-new BMW, you can finally get Apple’s car infotainment system on pretty much any new model.
But it’ll cost you.
By Brandon Shaw
I know, you’re tired of hearing, “Frank Ocean’s new album is amazing!!!” Me too. I’m interested less in the album itself, and more in what it means for the future of music.
With a pair of Apple Music exclusives, Frank Ocean pulled a fast one on his old record label — and shook up the the entire record industry. It’s the latest indicator that Apple sits at the center of a rapidly evolving music industry, where rules and strategies are changing by the minute. Now everyone from Spotify to Universal Music Group is frantically trying to figure out what to do.