Neil Hughes
A year after its debut, Apple's $10-per-month music streaming service is reportedly set for a major overhaul at the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, including a shakeup to its user interface aimed at making it easier to use.
Citing sources familiar with the company's plans, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Apple plans better integration between Apple Music and iTunes, and also plans to expand its Beats 1 radio service. In addition, Apple is also said to be planning a major ad campaign to promote the changes.
The new look for Apple Music is said to have been overseen by Apple's Robert Kondrk and Trent Reznor, while chief designer Jony Ive, services head Eddy Cue, and Beats executive Jimmy Iovine have also reportedly provided input.
Since the launch of Apple Music, Apple's iTunes business has remained steady and profitable, earning about $3.5 billion — about three times more than the streaming business has earned, sources indicated to Bloomberg. As a result, Apple has been reluctant to push Apple Music to legacy iTunes customers.
Apple's Beats 1 streaming radio station was a major part of the launch of Apple Music last year. Trademark filings by Apple in late 2015 revealed that the company is working on more streaming stations, numbered Beats 2 through Beats 5.
Apple has also promoted its streaming service with exclusive tracks from artists like Drake, in an effort to woo customers away from competing services like Spotify. Apple Music also launched with a free three-month trial period.
Apple's services business saw massive 60 percent increase in 2015, thanks in part to the debut of Apple Music, and the company has pushed its growing services business to investors. The strong performance has helped to offset declines in other products, including the first-ever year-over-year decline in iPhone sales.
Last week, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook revealed that Apple Music has 13 million paid subscribers. That was up from 11 million subscribers two months prior.
Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on June 13. In addition to a revamp for Apple Music, the next-generation versions of iOS, OS X, tvOS and watchOS are also expected to be announced.
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
28 Comments
the should just fix the basics:
- leave downloaded songs on my device instead of randomly deleting them so I have to download them again
- allow me to actually listen to my downloaded songs when I am outside of WiFi, that is the purpose after all, of downloading them
- let 100% of my music be available through the iCloud
- do away with the "xxxx cannot be downloaded at this time"..
To me, this seems like an odd event to announce Apple Music improvements. I guess the days of focusing on iOS, Mac OS, WatchOS, tvOS are gone. I guess Apple Music is software too, but its not like developers can tap into it or something to my knowledge.
Reading this report it makes me wonder who was responsible for the first app? Kind of sounds like it was Beats employees that might no longer be with the company. Honestly I think Apple needs to write off this acquisition and send Jimmy and Dre on their way. Keep Trent Reznor if he's actually useful. I have yet to read anything that indicates Iovine is an asset to the company. Kind of sad to see that Eddy Cue got suckered in by this clown.
They HAVE to remove the idiotic requirement to use iCloud Music Library for all your music if you wish to download even one Apple Music song to listen to offline. This is crazy stupid.
Because of this, I don't use Apple Music, though I'd like to. But I'm not uploading 10,000 songs only to stream them back to myself, which doesn't even work reliably depending wifi or cellular access, being in buildings, traveling, commuting, out of country, etc. And now I have to pay AT&T to steam my own music back to me? Leave local sync available even for iCloud Music Library downloads. If it's some licensing issue, fix it!
While I'm at it, they also need to re-enable Photos LAN sharing. This is another feature they stupidly removed, and they now expect me to upload 20k photos so my family 20 feet away can look at photos on their computers?
In either case, I'm not going to start manually managing what I want uploaded (Photos) or downloaded (Music).
Apple needs to be very careful with moves like this, because it feels like a forced attempt to generate services revenue. Forcing can crack the golden egg, the benefit of the ecosystem.