Understanding Apple Music

Vidit Bhargava

On Monday 8th June 2015, in their usual ‘One More Thing’ tradition, Apple announced “Apple Music”. A music streaming service to keep up with the times and provide more than just a ‘Music’ app to store purchased music.

While I am someone who prefers to buy music rather than stream it. I definitely see a lot of advantages of streaming. One of the major uses of one is to discover a greater variety of songs, listen to them for a long time and then if you ‘really’ like it, purchase the track. I don’t see myself doing that for an A.R. Rahman album, I’d instantly buy it, I’ve hardly ever disliked his songs, but say, there’s a song I heard on radio. I’d probably hold the purchase on that, and listen to it on a streaming service before I make the decision. This is where Apple Music is going to be super convenient. 

But Apple Music isn’t just about streaming music. Streaming isn’t even it’s killer feature. It’s most important features depend on Humans instead of algorithms.

I’ve tried to explain it all through these 4 images:

Apple Music is three things. Music Discovery. 24/7 Radio. Social Network for Artist to share exclusive content with their fans.

Availability: Apple Music will be available in a 100+ countries on June 30th 2015. While this is what was announced, none of the countries except from US show this release date on their specific websites. Will India get it on the 30th? It should. The Indian iTunes Music Store has been proactively curating content over the past few months. It seems ready for the streaming service.

Pricing: Some of the Apple Music features will be available for free. While others will require a subscription.

Pricing:
First Three Months: Free
Single Subscription: $9.99 per Month
Upto 6 Family Members: $14.99 per Month