Product likely to be announced in June.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Since its acquisition of Beats for $3 billion last year, it’s been widely accepted that Apple would inevitably make a play on the streaming music market. After dominating the music downloads with the iTunes store, it always seemed like the next logical step.
Details have been scare until now, but 9 to 5 Mac, which is renowned for breaking stories relating to the Cupertino-based tech giant, has released a piece chock full of insights into the upcoming streaming service.
Apple’s new music service will be geared towards competition with Spotify and Rdio specifically, according to 9 to 5, and will likely be announced in June when the company hosts its annual WWDC conference.
Some analysts had assumed Apple would thrust the Beats brand into the spotlight in order to attract customers to its nascent streaming platform, but it appears the California consumer electronics firm is instead creating an entirely new program that will incorporate Beats technology into the final Apple-branded product.
Users will be able to access music in two different ways on Apple’s service. First, it will pull from the extensive Beats library to offer the massive library of songs curated by Beats’ founders, Dr. Dre and Jimmy Lovine. Besides streaming, the service will also be able to access users’ personal music, which can be stored in the cloud. Apple hopes to offer listeners a seamless audio experience by allowing them to go back and forth between the two.
Apple wanted to announce the new streaming solution earlier in 2015, but has run into unexpected delays in completing the project. According to 9 to 5’s report, Apple employees were angered that Beats programmers were placed above them on the project totem in order to expedite progress, which consequently led to an “unhealthy working environment.”
Cupertino’s latest golden egg will reportedly cost around $7.99 per month, which is two dollars cheaper than Spotify’s Premium service. Apple supposedly wanted the price to be an even more competitive $5 per month, but gave up on the notion after a long series of negotiations involving Beats.