Apple has finally bit the bullet and is about to enter the very competitive music streaming business. We’ve already brought you the nitty gritty of the service. In a gist, Apple Music is essentially Cupertino’s version of Spotify or Rdio with some decidedly Apple twists.
The service will integrate with the regular Music application on iOS devices as well as iTunes on Windows & Mac. The catalog is estimated to have over 30 million tracks and this will be accompanied by a 24 hour radio service called Beats 1. The radio service is being curated by the likes of Zane Lowe and will incorporate music shows as well as interviews all of which is very exciting indeed. Of course like other music services, you can select tracks and artists and create radio stations based on them.
You can also stream entire albums, specific tracks as you’d expect. It is quite interesting to see that the company has managed to get onboard many artists like AC/DC and Taylor Swift who have so far been reclusive when it comes to online streaming. Worth noting is that the service will have a lot of human curation in place for playlists. It is estimated that about 300 human curated playlists will be available at launch. Apple Music will be available on June 30 in over 100 countries for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and PC and will be available for Android and Apple TV in the fall. After a 3-month free membership, you have to pay $9.99 per month for single membership and 14.99 per month for a family plan that provides service for up to six family members.
Early information from the beta release has indicated that pricing in India might be Rs. 120 per month for a single user with a family account running Rs. 180 which would be really competitive. We’ll have our impressions of the service live post the launch tonight but you can tune in at 8:30pm Indian time via iTunes to check out the service yourself.