If you find yourself at a loose end today, perhaps after overindulging on the eggnog and looking to sit down for a few minutes, why not check out our picks for the top apps of the last week?
Whether you own an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch or MacBook, we’re confident you’ll find something to enjoy on our list!
Apple Music has passed the 20 million subscriber mark, according to new figures released by Apple.
Last time the company released adoption figures, back in September, those numbers hovered around 17 million — meaning the number of paying Apple Music users jumped 15 percent in the past three months.
Canadian rap star and Apple fanboy Drake gives us a glimpse at his comical side in the company’s latest Apple Music ad by singing along to Taylor Swift while getting beaten by the bench press.
The ad is part of Apple Music’s ongoing “distractingly good” campaign, which has previously featured Swift herself.
The Spotify app is killing your Mac’s solid-state storage drive, and you need to update now to prevent it.
For the past five months, a bug has caused the app to write massive amounts of data to SSDs, potentially knocking years off their lifespan.
To beef up its streaming music service, Apple has hired some key employees from Omnifone, a company that was a pioneer of in music streaming industry.
Rumors floated this summer that Apple was looking to acquire Omnifone after the company filed for bankruptcy. Instead of buying the whole thing though, a new report claims that Apple instead bought some of parts of Omnifone’s tech and workforce.
Well that didn’t last long! Having previously taken almost all of his music off streaming services due to their alleged poor sound quality, Neil Young is back on Apple Music, Spotify and Rdio — as well as new music service Amazon Music Unlimited.
The creator of the high-fidelity PonoPlayer, Young last year published a missive in which he said that he didn’t want his music to be “devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting or any other form of distribution.”
Somewhere along the way, though, it seems his stance his changed.
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 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.
Not only does Google want to replace your iPhone with a Pixel, the search giant revealed today that it plans to invade homes with three new products that directly compete with offerings from Apple and Amazon.
During an event in San Francisco today, Google unveiled a new Wi-Fi router, an improved Chromecast and a new Google Home device that’s a lot like Amazon’s Echo smart speaker, only it’s powered by Google Assistant.
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.
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.
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.
Sonos has teamed up with Amazon to bring Alexa voice control to its range of wireless speakers. The long-term deal will soon allow users to interact with their Sonos speakers via Alexa using voice commands.
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.
Scoring an exclusive album deal with Apple Music can be highly lucrative for artists looking for independence, but it might come with some serious payback from Spotify, which is reportedly punishing musicians that sign such deals.
Musicians have been dragged into the fight between Apple and Spotify, according to new reports saying Apple’s rival is threatening to bury artists in its search results. Meanwhile, Spotify has denied the accusations, which come from anonymous sources cited by Bloomberg and The New York Times.
As Apple secures exclusive after exclusive with the hottest names in music, Spotify is beginning to feel the heat. According to Troy Carter, global head of creator services at Spotify, these deals are “bad for artists, bad for consumers, and bad for the whole industry.”
Frank Ocean’s new album, Blonde, debuted as one of the biggest Apple Music exclusives of the year, but if his record label has its way, it will be the last exclusive anyone ever gets from one of its artists.
Negotiations between music streaming service Spotify and all three major record labels have hit a snag lately and Apple Music is a big reason why.
Spotify’s licensing agreements with Sony, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have reportedly been on a rolling month-by-month basis for much of 2016, yet the companies haven’t been able to hammer out long-term deals yet because Spotify isn’t willing to share as much revenue as Apple Music.
In its quest for more exclusive music content, Apple Music has signed an agreement with Cash Money Records: the record label which brought fan Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, Young Money and Birdman.
According to the deal, which was described as a “power move” by co-founder Birdman on his Instagram, Apple will produce a documentary about the label — set to air exclusively on Apple Music.
The new lyrics feature in Apple Music might not be powered by a third-party company, according to a new job posting found on Apple’s website.
It appears that Apple instead plans to do most of the work compiling lyrics all on its own by hiring “a team of lyrics curators with excellent writing skills, music knowledge, and attention to detail.”
Spotify has launched a new music portal that puts the soundtracks to your favorite videos games in one place. It features original music from titles like Grand Theft Auto, Halo and No Man’s Sky — plus curated playlists from Spotify and the community.
From a Snapchat-inspired Instagram update to a beautifully frustrating endless runner puzzle game, we’ve sifted through this week’s most exciting apps to bring you the ones you absolutely need to download now.
Check out our picks below. Trust us, this is the way you want to spend Sunday!