8 ms·

Introducing Apple Music

86 points by brbcoding 11y ago

LesZedCB 11y ago
I'm curious what exactly the EDIT: Artist payment model will be, especially compared to spotify
- hellameta 11y ago
  Looks like $10/month for unlimited streaming... http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/01/apple-beats-streaming-10-dollars-a-month/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/01/apple-beats-streaming-10-...
- dudus 11y ago
  9.99 for individual and 14.99 for a family plan. With 3 months free And free ad supported stations as well. http://www.apple.com/music/ http://www.apple.com/music/
  - LesZedCB 11y ago
    Oops I meant artist payment model!
baldfat 11y ago
> Revolutionary Really Apple Revolutionary? You are years late tot he game and you bought Beats. Revolutionary and you have Jimmy Iovinne do the presentation?
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  Who is Jimmy Iovinne, and what's with the juxtaposition of him and 'revolutionary'?
  - k-mcgrady 11y ago
    He's one of the world's most successful record producers and also co-founder of Interscope. He worked on Springsteen, Tom Petty, U2, Dire Straits, John Lennon records and more.
    - arfliw 11y ago
      He also cofounded Beats with Dr Dre and sold it to Apple. Many speculated that was partially a talent acquisition, to get him working on projects exactly like this.
      - k-mcgrady 11y ago
        Did he co-found Beats? I couldn't confirm. AFAIK he joined up early and got lots of stock or something like that.
        arfliw 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats_Electronics#Formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats_Electronics#Formation >The company was formally established in 2006,[1] a time when Iovine perceived two key problems in the music industry... My understanding is he essentially WAS Beats, with Dre lending his name and like consulting on style and whatnot. Iovine being the brains. That has carried over to Apple where Iovine works full-time and Dre does not. Apple wanted Iovine.
    - baldfat 11y ago
      Can confirm he is amazing producer. Also can confirm that Apple was not able to do the job so they had to hire from the outside.
- Dirlewanger 11y ago
  It took this instance of Apple's chronic weasel-word-using habit for you to question it?
seivan 11y ago
Looking forward to ditching Spotify. Stopped paying once they removed Cmd-F filtering and the app started to lag on my 2014 Macbook Pro (with dedicated GPU). Also, I agree with the keynote speakers, Spotify "Radio" never worked for me. Always got repeated songs or songs I hated. I wanted automated "thumbs up" if I finished a song, or "thumbs down" if I skipped it, without having to worry about repeated songs. And a million of other complaints.
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  I don't have a compelling reason to leave spotify yet, but I'm open to changing. I think their redesigned app aesthetic is pretty nice. I have good luck with the radio and repeated songs, but I wish it were smarter about genre/mood matching.
- hammock 11y ago
  >Stopped paying once they removed Cmd-F filtering Didn't realize Ctrl-F was ever a thing in Spotify. But I just tried it and it works for me (MacBook Pro). I'll be trying that out more now.
  - seivan 11y ago
    Go to an artist page or "Global Top 50" and try that. As I said, I never figured why they removed it or disabled it on certain places.
    - a1k0n 11y ago
      Because the desktop app got a ground-up rewrite and cmd-f didn't make it back in to all views yet.
      - seivan 11y ago
        I know how the engineers must have felt, I bet they wanted more time to make it more modular so they could have just gone self.addComponent(new Filterable()) or some shit and it would have added Cmd/Ctrl-F
dvcc 11y ago
So the radio, shared playlists and Beats? Except now when you listen to the radio, you get to eat away at your data plan.
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  unless you have t-mobile, which has free audio streaming.
- uncletaco 11y ago
  Unless you use Sprint in the US. Or connect to wifi when you're streaming music in your home.
  - vbezhenar 11y ago
    It's funny how much of Apple functionality is tightly coupled with US. In my city (capital of my country) Apple Maps are worthless, Siri suggestions are worthless, PayPass is worthless, Apple Pay is worthless, iTunes Movies are not available, Bookstore is not available. Now streaming will be worthless too, because mobile data plan for 1 GB per month costs more than this Apple Stream (though I might listen to it at home or at work, but I prefer to listen music in car or while walking, so it's less attractive).
    - johnward 11y ago
      Most of those things are kind of worthless in the US too still. Many retailers have no idea what NFC or Apple Pay is. I used Google Wallet at gas station a few months ago and blew the cashiers mind. The only thing I know about apple maps is my wife still prefers Google Maps.
- threeseed 11y ago
  Or at home, work, gym, cafe etc. Lot of places have free Wifi.
zyxley 11y ago
"Beats One" sounds like it's halfway an attempt to move into the SiriusXM space - live radio over the 'net and on devices, with actual DJs and so on, packaged in a way that's slicker than most internet radio streams. It will be interesting to see if it's any good.
heyts 11y ago
The "connect" feature is eerily reminiscent of Ping if you remember that. It was part of iTunes and was a failure from the start and subsequently killed at some point. I'm really wondering if they will succeed this time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping
- rimantas 11y ago
  Connect is about connecting artist to listeners. Was Ping about that?
  - tjl 11y ago
    Yes it was. I think the main difference this time will be integration with Twitter and Facebook. If the artists know that what they post on it can show up in Facebook and/or Twitter they'd be more likely to use it. We'll see. It could flop like Ping, or it might not.
mercer 11y ago
I don't quite understand why they put so much emphasis on 24/7 radio. First, I knew few (younger) people who listen to radio. Second, it's technically not that impressive. But most importantly: music is very divisive and tastes differ greatly. Apple has usually done a great job to keep their image as neutral as possible. There's a reason why the types of artists they generally associate with are rather inoffensive (Coldplay, The Beatles) or at worst found annoying (U2, or rather Bono). So who gets excited about such a radio station? (I just saw Drake get on stage, which actually illustrates this. He's neutral enough to not offend, but because it's music, I imagine a collective groan from pretty much all of my friends.) To be clear, it's kind of a cute idea, but why emphasize it so much?
- frik 11y ago
  There was a big web radio hype in 2000-2001. "Web Radio Not Making Waves - An unfulfilled Internet vision: thousands of low-cost stations to challenge the status quo." as titled by LA Times in December 13, 2001, see the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20011216053056/http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-000098785dec13.story?coll=la-headlines-technology https://web.archive.org/web/20011216053056/http://www.latime... (Many web radio stations are still alive, but the hype is gone)
  - mercer 11y ago
    Exactly. Music is one of the most hype-sensitive industries. It's good that Apple is in the space, but they should be very careful about trying to be 'cool' about it. When they had U2 play some hits, that was innocuous enough. When they released a 'few U2 album' that was actually offensive to people (for a variety of reasons). Then, when Bono came on-stage and high-fived Cook, well, let's forget that moment. Surely their PR 'feelers' are aware of this and should've warned them that letting Drake ramble on stage would not be a great idea...
  - ssharp 11y ago
    Radio still has to be a wildly popular format, even though I don't listen to it anymore. Otherwise, Sirius/XM wouldn't still be in business, despite having a limited selection of music and terrible sound quality. All those subscribers can't just be there for Howard Stern. Also, digital music has become extremely popular, just not online radio. That could be an issue of quality (low) compared to selection (high) or just that a lot of people who utilize connected devices for music prefer listening to their music on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, etc. By investing in both sides of the fence, on-demand and curated, they can capture both audiences. And by hiring people like Zane Lowe, they are giving people additional reasons to go listen to radio vs. on-demand.
nostromo 11y ago
That was an inordinate amount of pomp and circumstance for an updated Music app. A radio station? No time shifting? People replaced their radios with Walkmen and iPods for a reason... And "Connect" just sounds like Ping 2.0.
- zyxley 11y ago
  > That was an inordinate amount of pomp and circumstance for an updated Music App. "We're basically cloning the entire feature set of Spotify and integrating that into our existing services" is bigger than you give it credit for.
  - underyx 11y ago
    It's not even the entire feature set. For instance, it seems like I can't control different devices with it, which has lately grown to be an essential feature for me — 60% of the time when I have my phone on the charger, I can just yell 'Okay, Google' from across the room, and Spotify will put whatever music I ask it to on my PC's speakers.
    - threeseed 11y ago
      Pretty sure that's available today. I just say 'Hey Siri play XYZ' on my watch and the music plays on my car stereo.
- ctdonath 11y ago
  One channel? Huh? I thought scheduled channel content was over.
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  Considering the Music app is probably one of the few that nearly everybody uses and they're completely changing how that works and how they want you to enjoy music it seems like just the right amount of pomp and circumstance.
- Grue3 11y ago
  I'm glad somebody remembers Ping. Apple's music offerings are not exactly a stream of successes as some like to think.
jameshart 11y ago
So with "News" and "Music", Apple's positioning themselves as a provider of curated, editorialized content. Isn't this a bit like the old Yahoo/MSN portal play? Are Apple betting they can actually found and fund a media consumption channel solely through subscriptions?
stock_toaster 11y ago
I found this entire part of the presentation a combination of boring and awkward. Honestly couldn't care less about it. I did find it funny when Iovine said "revolutionary" though, and a few in the crowd seemed to chuckle/laugh, and he appeared a bit confused.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  Apple only ever got away with this kind of breathless self-pimping because of Jobs. He had a unique panache that infected Apple with a curious energy. It's been really interesting watching Apple move past Steve. In many ways, they're killing it, in others, you can really feel the slow dissipation of Jobs' halo.
- cjensen 11y ago
  It was a very un-Apple-like presentation. Apple has a reputation for rehearsing presentations many times. The presentations are critiqued in order to make sure they are clear and to the point. These presenters didn't fit the usual model. They acted like hadn't rehearsed much (Iovine in particular). It was wildly unclear what, exactly, they were talking about. Lots of abstract hand-waving instead of keeping things concrete and clear. I'm mystified how this happened.
  - hamburglar 11y ago
    Eddy Cue was embarrassing. He made so many grammatical errors it was like he was winging it, and when he tries to seem hip it's cringeworthy. There was a moment where he queued some stuff up and then stiffly said, "yeah! I think I'm really gonna enjoy this playlist!" as if anybody in history has ever exclaimed that.
oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
No new iPod announced yet. Disappointing.
cletus 11y ago
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. iTunes Radio, Apple's first attempt in this space, is awful. X skips per hour? Really? The story went that Apple's execs actually had no idea how Spotify worked so thought they really had something. It's the kind of fiasco that would've earned the execs a bollicking in the Jobs days and, to me, the buck had to stop at Tim Cook. I'm a paid Spotify subscriber. Generally I like it but it has its warts: - They did an app update a few months ago that's viewed as pretty much universally awful for reasons I can't really explain; - Their catalog has many holes (eg Australian music, in this case probably because Spotify doesn't have an Australian service); - I used to think artists were being Luddites by opting out but there's actually good reason for this. They don't earn royalties proportional to the actual plays. The royalty scheme imposed by the record companies gives a disproportionate amount to currently popular artists; - Because of the last point you have artists who are missing or, in some cases, you have all their songs except their 1-2 money makers; - Worse, for some songs, particularly for things from the 70s for some reason, you can't get the original. You just get some shitty remaster that sounds like bad karaoke. - Spotify's radio feature is the real weak point for me. Repeats (sometimes with only a song in between) and the thumbing up and down I don't think really has the desired effect. Like I might be on a good string of songs but I know the worst thing I can do is thumb anything up OR down as experience has taught me this can only make things worse. Really "thumbs up" should probably mean "don't change anything". Or at least me listening to something in full is itself is a positive indicator. That being said, I'm not really sure you can do satisfying recommendations here. So much of music is I think tied to memory and nostalgia. You might like a particular song because of a particular person, place, time or event. How does liking that inform any other music choice? At the same time your radio playlist has to be large enough not to be too repetitive. What's more, there's actually an art to playlist selection. It's why, for example, at a concert you'll generally see a band start with something upbeat, play anything a bit more mellow in the middle and finish on a high note. Curated playlists (which I guess Apple is calling "guest DJs" because that's what it amounts to) is an idea with some history (eg Songza, bought by Google last year I think). I actually find myself listening to iHeartRadio a lot. I pick a music style I'm in the mood for and just try different stations until I find something not too objectionable. Sure there are DJs (99% irritating) and some ads but at least I don't need to build a playlist, worry about what's on Spotify and what isn't or make a decision each song about whether to thumb it up or down. It's it or nothing (well... something else). Radio really has a low cognitive cost.
jhgg 11y ago
Surprised they are also releasing this on Android!
- gpmcadam 11y ago
  I'm guessing they want it to compete on all available platforms, just how Spotify has. Mac, iDevices, Windows and Android is a start. They'd do well to add a web client and/or a native Linux client to that list, but the aforementioned platforms covers almost all users I'd guess.
- tjakab 11y ago
  There's already a Beats Music app on Android, and possibly with a not-insignificant subscriber base. Since Apple Music is replacing Beats Music outright they probably didn't want to leave those subscribers out in the cold. They'd basically be handing over customers to Spotify and Rdio.
  - johnward 11y ago
    That plus the family pricing thing is enough to have me consider the service. My wife loves iOS. I currently use Android. $14 a month isn't too bad for multiple users.
god_bless_texas 11y ago
I think the most exciting part of Apple Music is the idea of allowing musicians to put their music into the apple store. Much like the Apple store gave a storefront to small indie developers, this might do the same for musicians worldwide. The idea that a small time guy can get a small profit via the app store instead of just posting onto Youtube and crossing his or her fingers is cool. Aside from that, I really have expected thought changes more than anything from Apple WWDC and this one is just disappointing.
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  Little guys have always been able to get music on iTunes. CDBaby/Tunecore etc. allow you to upload your music and have it distributed everywhere including iTunes and Spotify. Artists will still want to go through those services as they enable you to upload one place and be available everywhere.
  - threeseed 11y ago
    It may have been available on iTunes but it sure as hell wouldn't ever be discoverable. Apple Music should help out with this.
piyush_soni 11y ago
"Remember when Steve Jobs said even Jesus couldn’t sell music subscriptions?" http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/8/8744963/steve-jobs-jesus-people-dont-want-music-subscriptions http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/8/8744963/steve-jobs-jesus-pe...
temuze 11y ago
The product page is live now: http://www.apple.com/music/ http://www.apple.com/music/
devindotcom 11y ago
Would have been a great 5-minute update - "we're adding in direct interactions with artists, and a cool new worldwide radio station DJed by a couple really clued-in people. It's reasonably priced and works with all your existing iTunes stuff. First three months free!!" But that looong, rambling explanation of every little feature, punctuated by clips from hip-but-safe artists, was entirely too much show for it.
- stock_toaster 11y ago
  Strongly agree. As a user who enjoys their products, I actually hope this flops as hard as Ping did. I want them to focus on hardware, OS, and related services, and not so much on ... whatever the hell this was.
- davidhperry 11y ago
  Perhaps they needed to fill space after nixing the revamped Apple TV announcement, if recent rumors are to be believed.
Animats 11y ago
So what is this new product? The Apple site doesn't say. If you just want background music, try Radio Coast.[1]. This is a successful streaming music project which annoys the RIAA because it doesn't have to pay royalties. Years ago Seeburg, the jukebox manufacturer, offered a background music service, using a special record changer which played 1000 songs over and over. The music was recorded by their own in-house musicians, so they didn't have to pay the RIAA. They never copyrighted the records, which you had to do back then to get copyright protection. Instead, they used a primitive form of DRM - the speed, record size, groove width, and hole size are all nonstandard. All those records have been converted to files, and there's a streaming site. Hundreds of hours of 1950s elevator music. [1] http://radiocoast.com/ http://radiocoast.com/
- istvan__ 11y ago
  This is literally the best content in this thread. I haven'd heard about this but this project is freakin amazing.
unsignedint 11y ago
Wonder if they'll be providing web player for it. Personally, that would be a big deciding factor, as I don't want/can't run iTunes.
d0m 11y ago
The link just open a modal with "Introducing Apple music".. I couldn't find a way to watch the video or text associated with it. Is it a browser issue? Or is the link wrong?
- Nicholas_C 11y ago
  You have to click the X at the top left. For some reason it's a popup over the intro page.
thirdsun 11y ago
Concerning Radio: While I like the general idea of putting human curators in charge, I think the very broad target audience and the mainstream appeal + expectations of Apple will render this service close to useless for anyone who's really deep into music. I don't want to sound like a hipster, but I spent a lot of time digging up old and new gems in music and I really don't expect Apple's radio station to bring a lot of worthwhile discoveries to the table. The format itself is great - NTS radio has been doing similar stuff for years, independent from ad money or any other influences, just the taste of the respective show host. Apple however? They have to appeal, in general, to everyone and you can't have it both ways - it's either deep, niche and interesting to a small crowd...or very wide and superficial. Playlists: The suggestions coming from their playlists, don't sound more interesting than what rdio and probably every other streaming service (I don't use Spotify, can't compare) is doing - we saw Bruce Springsteen and "Big Rock" as automated playlists in the demo - not the hardest usecase I imagine. I'm less confident when it comes to obscure jazz fusion krautrock crossovers from the early 1970s. In that case you'll probably have to get your hands dirty yourself, with countless open tabs just like it has been for years. Not that I'm complaining, I enjoy going down those rabbit holes.
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  >> "They have to appeal, in general, to everyone and you can't have it both ways - it's either deep, niche and interesting to small crowd...or very wide and superficial." Why can't they can do 'shows' like regular radio catering to different tastes?
- bamboo_7 11y ago
  Have you ever used iTunes Radio? I find it to be better than Pandora for connecting and discovering hidden gems that I don't know about. I'm guessing Apple Music will use the same kind of 'genius' information.
r721 11y ago
>As Tim Cook and Jimmy Iovine revealed Apple's music streaming service on Monday, Spotify's Daniel Ek, whose streaming service is a direct competitor to Apple's, tweeted a two-word reaction that summed up his feels: "Oh ok." http://mashable.com/2015/06/08/daniel-ek-spotify-ceos-apple-music/ http://mashable.com/2015/06/08/daniel-ek-spotify-ceos-apple-...
capkutay 11y ago
Before talking about doing 'revoluationary' things in the music industry, I would love it if iTunes reliably had the music I paid for every time I opened it up instead of a greyed out list item with an ambiguous cloud icon next to it.
- j2bax 11y ago
  Oh I know. This kills me. Make sure iTunes Match is turned on in your Settings > Music. Somehow it got switched off on mine at one point or another. After turning it back on, everything is appearing now. I'm still not incredibly happy with the streaming though. Sometimes a song will end mid song and go to the next one. I kind of wish it could keep a cache of the last couple hundred songs I listened to to reduce network usage as well.
rconti 11y ago
Spotify has done a far, far better of integration with devices like Home Theater receivers than Apple has. Airplay works on my receiver, but Spotify is awesome. Fire up a playlist on the laptop, close it, switch to my phone, it can now control the playlist I started on the phone which is now running on the receiver. The receiver itself plays the music directly rather than being streamed from the device I started playing on. Nifty.
hyperbovine 11y ago
Any mention of whether it works offline / on which devices? All I want in life is to play sports while listening to Spotify on my iPod shuffle.
kyledrake 11y ago
It's just offering radio at cost? Download VLC and click on "Icecast Radio". Tens of thousands of streams, for free.
jameshart 11y ago
"Music has been part of the Apple DNA from the beginning". That quote's probably enough to get them back into the High Court... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
glomph 11y ago
Funny that they chose exactly the same name as google.
ConAntonakos 11y ago
Twitch.TV has actually taken up a large portion of my time listening to live DJ streams. Now if only I could easily use it on my phone while the screen light is off. If this is what Apple is trying to accomplish, then that's interesting; otherwise, there are so many products from which to choose.
chillytoes 11y ago
Apple Music is so underwhelming. I see nothing which differentiates it from so many other music products. It was a little sad to see the word "Revolutionary" projected above the stage. snore

86 points by brbcoding 11y ago

LesZedCB 11y ago

I'm curious what exactly the EDIT: Artist payment model will be, especially compared to spotify

hellameta 11y ago
Looks like $10/month for unlimited streaming... http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/01/apple-beats-streaming-10-dollars-a-month/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/01/apple-beats-streaming-10-...
dudus 11y ago
9.99 for individual and 14.99 for a family plan. With 3 months free And free ad supported stations as well. http://www.apple.com/music/ http://www.apple.com/music/
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  Oops I meant artist payment model!

baldfat 11y ago

> Revolutionary Really Apple Revolutionary? You are years late tot he game and you bought Beats. Revolutionary and you have Jimmy Iovinne do the presentation?

pavel_lishin 11y ago
Who is Jimmy Iovinne, and what's with the juxtaposition of him and 'revolutionary'?
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  He's one of the world's most successful record producers and also co-founder of Interscope. He worked on Springsteen, Tom Petty, U2, Dire Straits, John Lennon records and more.
  - arfliw 11y ago
    He also cofounded Beats with Dr Dre and sold it to Apple. Many speculated that was partially a talent acquisition, to get him working on projects exactly like this.
    - k-mcgrady 11y ago
      Did he co-found Beats? I couldn't confirm. AFAIK he joined up early and got lots of stock or something like that.
      - arfliw 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats_Electronics#Formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats_Electronics#Formation >The company was formally established in 2006,[1] a time when Iovine perceived two key problems in the music industry... My understanding is he essentially WAS Beats, with Dre lending his name and like consulting on style and whatnot. Iovine being the brains. That has carried over to Apple where Iovine works full-time and Dre does not. Apple wanted Iovine.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    Can confirm he is amazing producer. Also can confirm that Apple was not able to do the job so they had to hire from the outside.
Dirlewanger 11y ago
It took this instance of Apple's chronic weasel-word-using habit for you to question it?

seivan 11y ago

Looking forward to ditching Spotify. Stopped paying once they removed Cmd-F filtering and the app started to lag on my 2014 Macbook Pro (with dedicated GPU). Also, I agree with the keynote speakers, Spotify "Radio" never worked for me. Always got repeated songs or songs I hated. I wanted automated "thumbs up" if I finished a song, or "thumbs down" if I skipped it, without having to worry about repeated songs. And a million of other complaints.

LesZedCB 11y ago
I don't have a compelling reason to leave spotify yet, but I'm open to changing. I think their redesigned app aesthetic is pretty nice. I have good luck with the radio and repeated songs, but I wish it were smarter about genre/mood matching.
hammock 11y ago
>Stopped paying once they removed Cmd-F filtering Didn't realize Ctrl-F was ever a thing in Spotify. But I just tried it and it works for me (MacBook Pro). I'll be trying that out more now.
- seivan 11y ago
  Go to an artist page or "Global Top 50" and try that. As I said, I never figured why they removed it or disabled it on certain places.
  - a1k0n 11y ago
    Because the desktop app got a ground-up rewrite and cmd-f didn't make it back in to all views yet.
    - seivan 11y ago
      I know how the engineers must have felt, I bet they wanted more time to make it more modular so they could have just gone self.addComponent(new Filterable()) or some shit and it would have added Cmd/Ctrl-F

dvcc 11y ago

So the radio, shared playlists and Beats? Except now when you listen to the radio, you get to eat away at your data plan.

LesZedCB 11y ago
unless you have t-mobile, which has free audio streaming.
uncletaco 11y ago
Unless you use Sprint in the US. Or connect to wifi when you're streaming music in your home.
- vbezhenar 11y ago
  It's funny how much of Apple functionality is tightly coupled with US. In my city (capital of my country) Apple Maps are worthless, Siri suggestions are worthless, PayPass is worthless, Apple Pay is worthless, iTunes Movies are not available, Bookstore is not available. Now streaming will be worthless too, because mobile data plan for 1 GB per month costs more than this Apple Stream (though I might listen to it at home or at work, but I prefer to listen music in car or while walking, so it's less attractive).
  - johnward 11y ago
    Most of those things are kind of worthless in the US too still. Many retailers have no idea what NFC or Apple Pay is. I used Google Wallet at gas station a few months ago and blew the cashiers mind. The only thing I know about apple maps is my wife still prefers Google Maps.
threeseed 11y ago
Or at home, work, gym, cafe etc. Lot of places have free Wifi.

zyxley 11y ago

"Beats One" sounds like it's halfway an attempt to move into the SiriusXM space - live radio over the 'net and on devices, with actual DJs and so on, packaged in a way that's slicker than most internet radio streams. It will be interesting to see if it's any good.

heyts 11y ago

The "connect" feature is eerily reminiscent of Ping if you remember that. It was part of iTunes and was a failure from the start and subsequently killed at some point. I'm really wondering if they will succeed this time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping

rimantas 11y ago
Connect is about connecting artist to listeners. Was Ping about that?
- tjl 11y ago
  Yes it was. I think the main difference this time will be integration with Twitter and Facebook. If the artists know that what they post on it can show up in Facebook and/or Twitter they'd be more likely to use it. We'll see. It could flop like Ping, or it might not.

mercer 11y ago

I don't quite understand why they put so much emphasis on 24/7 radio. First, I knew few (younger) people who listen to radio. Second, it's technically not that impressive. But most importantly: music is very divisive and tastes differ greatly. Apple has usually done a great job to keep their image as neutral as possible. There's a reason why the types of artists they generally associate with are rather inoffensive (Coldplay, The Beatles) or at worst found annoying (U2, or rather Bono). So who gets excited about such a radio station? (I just saw Drake get on stage, which actually illustrates this. He's neutral enough to not offend, but because it's music, I imagine a collective groan from pretty much all of my friends.) To be clear, it's kind of a cute idea, but why emphasize it so much?

frik 11y ago
There was a big web radio hype in 2000-2001. "Web Radio Not Making Waves - An unfulfilled Internet vision: thousands of low-cost stations to challenge the status quo." as titled by LA Times in December 13, 2001, see the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20011216053056/http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-000098785dec13.story?coll=la-headlines-technology https://web.archive.org/web/20011216053056/http://www.latime... (Many web radio stations are still alive, but the hype is gone)
- mercer 11y ago
  Exactly. Music is one of the most hype-sensitive industries. It's good that Apple is in the space, but they should be very careful about trying to be 'cool' about it. When they had U2 play some hits, that was innocuous enough. When they released a 'few U2 album' that was actually offensive to people (for a variety of reasons). Then, when Bono came on-stage and high-fived Cook, well, let's forget that moment. Surely their PR 'feelers' are aware of this and should've warned them that letting Drake ramble on stage would not be a great idea...
- ssharp 11y ago
  Radio still has to be a wildly popular format, even though I don't listen to it anymore. Otherwise, Sirius/XM wouldn't still be in business, despite having a limited selection of music and terrible sound quality. All those subscribers can't just be there for Howard Stern. Also, digital music has become extremely popular, just not online radio. That could be an issue of quality (low) compared to selection (high) or just that a lot of people who utilize connected devices for music prefer listening to their music on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, etc. By investing in both sides of the fence, on-demand and curated, they can capture both audiences. And by hiring people like Zane Lowe, they are giving people additional reasons to go listen to radio vs. on-demand.

nostromo 11y ago

That was an inordinate amount of pomp and circumstance for an updated Music app. A radio station? No time shifting? People replaced their radios with Walkmen and iPods for a reason... And "Connect" just sounds like Ping 2.0.

zyxley 11y ago
> That was an inordinate amount of pomp and circumstance for an updated Music App. "We're basically cloning the entire feature set of Spotify and integrating that into our existing services" is bigger than you give it credit for.
- underyx 11y ago
  It's not even the entire feature set. For instance, it seems like I can't control different devices with it, which has lately grown to be an essential feature for me — 60% of the time when I have my phone on the charger, I can just yell 'Okay, Google' from across the room, and Spotify will put whatever music I ask it to on my PC's speakers.
  - threeseed 11y ago
    Pretty sure that's available today. I just say 'Hey Siri play XYZ' on my watch and the music plays on my car stereo.
ctdonath 11y ago
One channel? Huh? I thought scheduled channel content was over.
k-mcgrady 11y ago
Considering the Music app is probably one of the few that nearly everybody uses and they're completely changing how that works and how they want you to enjoy music it seems like just the right amount of pomp and circumstance.
Grue3 11y ago
I'm glad somebody remembers Ping. Apple's music offerings are not exactly a stream of successes as some like to think.

jameshart 11y ago

So with "News" and "Music", Apple's positioning themselves as a provider of curated, editorialized content. Isn't this a bit like the old Yahoo/MSN portal play? Are Apple betting they can actually found and fund a media consumption channel solely through subscriptions?

stock_toaster 11y ago

I found this entire part of the presentation a combination of boring and awkward. Honestly couldn't care less about it. I did find it funny when Iovine said "revolutionary" though, and a few in the crowd seemed to chuckle/laugh, and he appeared a bit confused.

vinceguidry 11y ago
Apple only ever got away with this kind of breathless self-pimping because of Jobs. He had a unique panache that infected Apple with a curious energy. It's been really interesting watching Apple move past Steve. In many ways, they're killing it, in others, you can really feel the slow dissipation of Jobs' halo.
cjensen 11y ago
It was a very un-Apple-like presentation. Apple has a reputation for rehearsing presentations many times. The presentations are critiqued in order to make sure they are clear and to the point. These presenters didn't fit the usual model. They acted like hadn't rehearsed much (Iovine in particular). It was wildly unclear what, exactly, they were talking about. Lots of abstract hand-waving instead of keeping things concrete and clear. I'm mystified how this happened.
- hamburglar 11y ago
  Eddy Cue was embarrassing. He made so many grammatical errors it was like he was winging it, and when he tries to seem hip it's cringeworthy. There was a moment where he queued some stuff up and then stiffly said, "yeah! I think I'm really gonna enjoy this playlist!" as if anybody in history has ever exclaimed that.

oneeyedpigeon 11y ago

No new iPod announced yet. Disappointing.

cletus 11y ago

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. iTunes Radio, Apple's first attempt in this space, is awful. X skips per hour? Really? The story went that Apple's execs actually had no idea how Spotify worked so thought they really had something. It's the kind of fiasco that would've earned the execs a bollicking in the Jobs days and, to me, the buck had to stop at Tim Cook. I'm a paid Spotify subscriber. Generally I like it but it has its warts: - They did an app update a few months ago that's viewed as pretty much universally awful for reasons I can't really explain; - Their catalog has many holes (eg Australian music, in this case probably because Spotify doesn't have an Australian service); - I used to think artists were being Luddites by opting out but there's actually good reason for this. They don't earn royalties proportional to the actual plays. The royalty scheme imposed by the record companies gives a disproportionate amount to currently popular artists; - Because of the last point you have artists who are missing or, in some cases, you have all their songs except their 1-2 money makers; - Worse, for some songs, particularly for things from the 70s for some reason, you can't get the original. You just get some shitty remaster that sounds like bad karaoke. - Spotify's radio feature is the real weak point for me. Repeats (sometimes with only a song in between) and the thumbing up and down I don't think really has the desired effect. Like I might be on a good string of songs but I know the worst thing I can do is thumb anything up OR down as experience has taught me this can only make things worse. Really "thumbs up" should probably mean "don't change anything". Or at least me listening to something in full is itself is a positive indicator. That being said, I'm not really sure you can do satisfying recommendations here. So much of music is I think tied to memory and nostalgia. You might like a particular song because of a particular person, place, time or event. How does liking that inform any other music choice? At the same time your radio playlist has to be large enough not to be too repetitive. What's more, there's actually an art to playlist selection. It's why, for example, at a concert you'll generally see a band start with something upbeat, play anything a bit more mellow in the middle and finish on a high note. Curated playlists (which I guess Apple is calling "guest DJs" because that's what it amounts to) is an idea with some history (eg Songza, bought by Google last year I think). I actually find myself listening to iHeartRadio a lot. I pick a music style I'm in the mood for and just try different stations until I find something not too objectionable. Sure there are DJs (99% irritating) and some ads but at least I don't need to build a playlist, worry about what's on Spotify and what isn't or make a decision each song about whether to thumb it up or down. It's it or nothing (well... something else). Radio really has a low cognitive cost.

jhgg 11y ago

Surprised they are also releasing this on Android!

gpmcadam 11y ago
I'm guessing they want it to compete on all available platforms, just how Spotify has. Mac, iDevices, Windows and Android is a start. They'd do well to add a web client and/or a native Linux client to that list, but the aforementioned platforms covers almost all users I'd guess.
tjakab 11y ago
There's already a Beats Music app on Android, and possibly with a not-insignificant subscriber base. Since Apple Music is replacing Beats Music outright they probably didn't want to leave those subscribers out in the cold. They'd basically be handing over customers to Spotify and Rdio.
- johnward 11y ago
  That plus the family pricing thing is enough to have me consider the service. My wife loves iOS. I currently use Android. $14 a month isn't too bad for multiple users.

god_bless_texas 11y ago

I think the most exciting part of Apple Music is the idea of allowing musicians to put their music into the apple store. Much like the Apple store gave a storefront to small indie developers, this might do the same for musicians worldwide. The idea that a small time guy can get a small profit via the app store instead of just posting onto Youtube and crossing his or her fingers is cool. Aside from that, I really have expected thought changes more than anything from Apple WWDC and this one is just disappointing.

k-mcgrady 11y ago
Little guys have always been able to get music on iTunes. CDBaby/Tunecore etc. allow you to upload your music and have it distributed everywhere including iTunes and Spotify. Artists will still want to go through those services as they enable you to upload one place and be available everywhere.
- threeseed 11y ago
  It may have been available on iTunes but it sure as hell wouldn't ever be discoverable. Apple Music should help out with this.

piyush_soni 11y ago

"Remember when Steve Jobs said even Jesus couldn’t sell music subscriptions?" http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/8/8744963/steve-jobs-jesus-people-dont-want-music-subscriptions http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/8/8744963/steve-jobs-jesus-pe...

temuze 11y ago

The product page is live now: http://www.apple.com/music/ http://www.apple.com/music/

devindotcom 11y ago

Would have been a great 5-minute update - "we're adding in direct interactions with artists, and a cool new worldwide radio station DJed by a couple really clued-in people. It's reasonably priced and works with all your existing iTunes stuff. First three months free!!" But that looong, rambling explanation of every little feature, punctuated by clips from hip-but-safe artists, was entirely too much show for it.

stock_toaster 11y ago
Strongly agree. As a user who enjoys their products, I actually hope this flops as hard as Ping did. I want them to focus on hardware, OS, and related services, and not so much on ... whatever the hell this was.
davidhperry 11y ago
Perhaps they needed to fill space after nixing the revamped Apple TV announcement, if recent rumors are to be believed.

Animats 11y ago

So what is this new product? The Apple site doesn't say. If you just want background music, try Radio Coast.[1]. This is a successful streaming music project which annoys the RIAA because it doesn't have to pay royalties. Years ago Seeburg, the jukebox manufacturer, offered a background music service, using a special record changer which played 1000 songs over and over. The music was recorded by their own in-house musicians, so they didn't have to pay the RIAA. They never copyrighted the records, which you had to do back then to get copyright protection. Instead, they used a primitive form of DRM - the speed, record size, groove width, and hole size are all nonstandard. All those records have been converted to files, and there's a streaming site. Hundreds of hours of 1950s elevator music. [1] http://radiocoast.com/ http://radiocoast.com/

istvan__ 11y ago
This is literally the best content in this thread. I haven'd heard about this but this project is freakin amazing.

unsignedint 11y ago

Wonder if they'll be providing web player for it. Personally, that would be a big deciding factor, as I don't want/can't run iTunes.

d0m 11y ago

The link just open a modal with "Introducing Apple music".. I couldn't find a way to watch the video or text associated with it. Is it a browser issue? Or is the link wrong?

Nicholas_C 11y ago
You have to click the X at the top left. For some reason it's a popup over the intro page.

thirdsun 11y ago

Concerning Radio: While I like the general idea of putting human curators in charge, I think the very broad target audience and the mainstream appeal + expectations of Apple will render this service close to useless for anyone who's really deep into music. I don't want to sound like a hipster, but I spent a lot of time digging up old and new gems in music and I really don't expect Apple's radio station to bring a lot of worthwhile discoveries to the table. The format itself is great - NTS radio has been doing similar stuff for years, independent from ad money or any other influences, just the taste of the respective show host. Apple however? They have to appeal, in general, to everyone and you can't have it both ways - it's either deep, niche and interesting to a small crowd...or very wide and superficial. Playlists: The suggestions coming from their playlists, don't sound more interesting than what rdio and probably every other streaming service (I don't use Spotify, can't compare) is doing - we saw Bruce Springsteen and "Big Rock" as automated playlists in the demo - not the hardest usecase I imagine. I'm less confident when it comes to obscure jazz fusion krautrock crossovers from the early 1970s. In that case you'll probably have to get your hands dirty yourself, with countless open tabs just like it has been for years. Not that I'm complaining, I enjoy going down those rabbit holes.

k-mcgrady 11y ago
>> "They have to appeal, in general, to everyone and you can't have it both ways - it's either deep, niche and interesting to small crowd...or very wide and superficial." Why can't they can do 'shows' like regular radio catering to different tastes?
bamboo_7 11y ago
Have you ever used iTunes Radio? I find it to be better than Pandora for connecting and discovering hidden gems that I don't know about. I'm guessing Apple Music will use the same kind of 'genius' information.

r721 11y ago

>As Tim Cook and Jimmy Iovine revealed Apple's music streaming service on Monday, Spotify's Daniel Ek, whose streaming service is a direct competitor to Apple's, tweeted a two-word reaction that summed up his feels: "Oh ok." http://mashable.com/2015/06/08/daniel-ek-spotify-ceos-apple-music/ http://mashable.com/2015/06/08/daniel-ek-spotify-ceos-apple-...

capkutay 11y ago

Before talking about doing 'revoluationary' things in the music industry, I would love it if iTunes reliably had the music I paid for every time I opened it up instead of a greyed out list item with an ambiguous cloud icon next to it.

j2bax 11y ago
Oh I know. This kills me. Make sure iTunes Match is turned on in your Settings > Music. Somehow it got switched off on mine at one point or another. After turning it back on, everything is appearing now. I'm still not incredibly happy with the streaming though. Sometimes a song will end mid song and go to the next one. I kind of wish it could keep a cache of the last couple hundred songs I listened to to reduce network usage as well.

rconti 11y ago

Spotify has done a far, far better of integration with devices like Home Theater receivers than Apple has. Airplay works on my receiver, but Spotify is awesome. Fire up a playlist on the laptop, close it, switch to my phone, it can now control the playlist I started on the phone which is now running on the receiver. The receiver itself plays the music directly rather than being streamed from the device I started playing on. Nifty.

hyperbovine 11y ago

Any mention of whether it works offline / on which devices? All I want in life is to play sports while listening to Spotify on my iPod shuffle.

kyledrake 11y ago

It's just offering radio at cost? Download VLC and click on "Icecast Radio". Tens of thousands of streams, for free.

jameshart 11y ago

"Music has been part of the Apple DNA from the beginning". That quote's probably enough to get them back into the High Court... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

glomph 11y ago

Funny that they chose exactly the same name as google.

ConAntonakos 11y ago

Twitch.TV has actually taken up a large portion of my time listening to live DJ streams. Now if only I could easily use it on my phone while the screen light is off. If this is what Apple is trying to accomplish, then that's interesting; otherwise, there are so many products from which to choose.

chillytoes 11y ago

Apple Music is so underwhelming. I see nothing which differentiates it from so many other music products. It was a little sad to see the word "Revolutionary" projected above the stage. snore