Apple employees at the company’s Culver City offices may have been exposed to COVID-19 after an employee tested positive for the virus. Culver City is Apple’s entertainment hub where much of the work on Apple TV+ and Apple Music is done.
Apple reportedly signed the contracts it needs to keep streaming songs from the biggest labels. However, there supposedly was no mention in the agreements of an “Apple Prime” that would bundle this company’s music and video streaming services.
A music licensing company accuses Apple, Spotify, Google, SoundCloud, and other streaming services of entering into a price-fixing “conspiracy” to keep streaming music prices at anticompetitive levels.
Pro Music Rights (PMR) filed the complaint Monday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. PMR previously filed a lawsuit against Apple in December for allegedly streaming copyrighted music without the necessary permissions.
Spotify is making it a lot faster to find your favorite music or new things to listen to with a big update for its iOS app today.
The music streaming service revealed it overhauled the Home screen on its iPhone and iPad app, packing it with more content you love and better discovery and recommendation features that change throughout the day.
Spotify is reportedly making a big push to get record labels to pay to promote artists’ music in its service as a new way to generate revenue.
Despite having nearly double the number of paid subscribers as Apple Music, Spotify still isn’t a profitable company and is looking to the music industry to help it create new revenue streams. Although the talks are still ongoing, you could soon see sponsored songs in your playlists and other areas of the app.
Shazam is finally offering Apple Music integration on Android, almost two years after the music identification service was acquired by Apple.
Users have the ability to identify songs and enjoy full versions of them using their Apple Music subscription. The feature comes with a beta tag for now, but works just as you would expect.
Music streaming subscription services grew 13% in the United States in 2019, while iTunes-style downloads continued to decline.
According to a new report by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), streaming accounted for 79% of the overall music industry in the U.S. Physical sales, such as CDs and vinyl accounted for 10%, while downloads experienced the biggest decline — making up just 8% of revenue.
Like almost all of Apple’s built-in iOS apps, the Music app is capable but hard to use. Apple’s habit of hiding key functions behind multiple button-taps is in full force here, and it’s getting worse. Want to “heart” a track? You used to be able to do it from the lock screen player. Now you have to access the Music app’s share menu, and find it there.
And what if you want to view your recently added items as a list, or your list of songs as a grid? Tough. On the other hand, if you use features like the For You… playlists, and Apple Music’s excellent More by… recommendations, many alternative music apps don’t support them.
The answer to this digital music conundrum is Marvis Pro, a 1-year-old music app that offers everything you need — and nothing you don’t.
Apple is finally “considering” giving users the ability to set third-party web browsers and email clients as defaults on iOS, according to a new Bloomberg report. It could also open up HomePod to rival music streaming services.
iPhone and iPad owners can already install third-party alternatives, but iOS currently does not allow them to override Apple’s built-in services. That could change as Apple faces increasing pressure over the tight control it imposes over its mobile devices.
Apple Music’s lyric visualizer has arrived on Mac with the second beta release of macOS 10.15.4 Wednesday.
The feature, which gives users scrolling, karaoke-style song lyrics, was introduced as a much-lauded feature with iOS 13. Now Apple is porting it bringing it to macOS users as well.
You can now sing along to your favorite tracks on Spotify without messing up the words. The world’s biggest streaming service has finally caught up with Apple Music by adding time-synced song lyrics, courtesy of Musixmatch.
Apple Music now has the ability to intelligently sort alternate album versions. The new feature, brought back from Beats Music, presents you with other versions of the same album in a new section beneath the track list.
Apple Music and Spotify pushed their paid subscriber numbers to new heights in 2019, but the number of people that share their account passwords is also increasing.
Nearly $1 billion in possible revenue maybe have been lost in 2019 thanks to stream “mooching”, according to a new study that estimates there are 95 million people in the U.S. using a major streaming service.
Apple Music has added another media industry veteran to its roster of top executives.
Former Warner Music Group head of innovation, Jeff Bronkikowski, revealed that he has accepted a job with the iPhone-maker to become the new global head of strategic music initiatives for Apple Music.
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.
Digital media and lyrics company Genius (previously Rap Genius) has teamed up with Apple to show its popular video series Verified on Apple Music.
Genius has produced more than 800 episodes of the show since 2016. The show features popular artists breaking down the lyrics to their own songs. Artists who have appeared include Billie Eilish, Sting, and Chance the Rapper.
Music fans won’t even need to tune into Super Bowl LIV to catch a glimpse of Jennifer Lopez and Shakira’s joint halftime show.
The NFL revealed today that all musical performances at this year’s big game will be released as a visual album on Apple Music. Along with the J. Lo/Shakira set, you’ll also be able to stream the National Anthem with Demi Lovato and America the Beautiful with Yolanda Adams.
It’s the year 2020 and absolutely everyone is making a streaming service, including TikTok.
The budding social network is hard at work inking licensing deals for its upcoming music streaming service, Resso, that will compete against Spotify and Apple Music. TikTok owner ByteDance reportedly struck a deal with the agency Merlin, which represents tens of thousands of artists, paving the way for the company to launch its music app globally.
Shifting focus from being a video-sharing app to creating a music platform may seem like an odd move for TikTok. But after months of binging on TikTok videos, I’m convinced it could become the biggest threat to Apple Music and Spotify.
Amazon Music is inching closer to Apple Music in terms of total subscribers.
The online retailer revealed today that its music service has surpassed 55 million customers but it still has a long road to go if it wants to catch up to Spotify’s numbers.
Apple is deepening its partnership with the NBA by teaming up to launch a global playlist on Apple Music to highlight independent hip-hop artists.
The new playlist, dubbed “BASE:LINE” (get it? Cause there’s a baseline in rap songs and on the basketball court), will be curated by Apple Music’s director of hip-hop and R&B Ebro Darden. New artists and songs will be added to the playlist every Thursday with the first edition being made available today.
Apple today marked the close of an historic 2019 for its Services businesses following its biggest ever year so far.
The introduction of Apple Arcade, Apple Card, News +, and TV+ helped ensure Services continued to reach new heights. They also mean Apple goes into 2020 with “incredible momentum.”
Streaming music services such as Apple Music have completely taken over the music market, a new report from the Recording Industry Association of America makes clear.
The organization notes that streaming now accounts for a massive 80% of the music market in the United States. That’s up from a minuscule 7% a decade ago in 2010. In the first half of 2019, 61 million people in the US had streaming subscriptions.
What were you listening to most this year? Was it Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road, one of the catchiest songs of the whole year? Or were you — like Cult of Mac writer Luke Dormehl — only listening to music made before 1997, after which he claims everything got unlistenable? Or perhaps you were hooked on the inexplicably popular Coldplay?
If you did all your listening on Apple Music, then you can easily check your top 100 songs of 2019, and also other years past. You just need to check your Apple Music Replay playlists. Only it’s not quite as easy as you might have thought…
In macOS Catalina, iTunes has disappeared. It’s been replaced by the new Music app, which is a version of the iOS Music app. You could never call iTunes “beloved,” but it did its job, and had plenty of power hidden inside its confusing and bloated interface. The Apple Music app, on the other hand, is rather basic. But it still lets you do one thing that remains impossible on iOS: You can add your own music to your library. And yes, it will then sync that music to your iDevices. Let’s see how.
Apple stands accusing of breaking the US Copyright Act by streaming copyrighted songs through Apple Music without the right permissions.
The company Pro Music Rights (PRM) filed its complaint in New York on Wednesday. It describes unpaid royalties and ongoing infringement relating to a number of songs. PMR licenses a couple of million tracks, including works from artists such as A$AP Rocky, Wiz Khalifa, Pharrell, Gucci Mane, and others.
