Updated 8.22pm
APPLE HAS ANNOUNCED it is launching its own music-streaming service to rival the likes of Spotify.
Apple Music was announced this evening at the company’s developers conference.
It will also feature a 24/7 worldwide radio station called Beats One, with DJ Zane Lowe already involved.
It will be the first Apple-made app that will also be available on Android devices.
“We’ve had a long relationship with music, and music has had a rich history of change, some of which we’ve played a part in,” Tim Cook said.
Today we’re announcing Apple Music… [and] it will change the way you will experience Music forever.
The service will allow users to ‘stream any song, album or playlist they choose’, as well as tracks from their own music library, and will offer playlists curated by experts.
It will incorporate new commands for Siri, according to a release from Apple:
Ask Siri to, “Play me the best songs from 1994,” “Play the best FKA twigs song,” or “What was the number one song in February 2011?”
However, it won’t come free. The structure so far is:
Apple Music will be available on most Apple devices by the end of this month, and on Apple TV and Android devices this autumn.
Talks about Apple introducing its own music-streaming service emerged after it completed its acquisition of Beats Music for $3 billion last year. When it announced the deal, it focused on Beats music-streaming service, which included the hiring of its co-founders, Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine.
Apple has more than 800 million iTunes accounts, but as music streaming services rose in popularity, music sales declined. The Associated Press claims that Apple aims to sign up 100 million subscribers for its new service.
Spotify, the largest music streaming service globally, has 15 million users paying for the service out of 60 million.
At a recent event, it introduced a number of new features including Now, which presents music based on what you’re doing at that time of day, talk radio, podcasts and video, and a running menu which detects the tempo you’re running at before choosing the right song.
Additional reporting by Nicky Ryan.
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