Apple Unveils Streaming Music Service

Yesterday Apple unveiled Apple Music, its long-awaited streaming music service. Via Gizmodo:

The basics: Apple Music doesn’t appear to have a free vibe, although starting June 30th, everyone will be offered a free three month subscription. Like everything other service out there, the premium price will be $10 per month. There’s also a $15 per month family plan for up to six family members, which is a pretty sweet deal, depending on how exactly it’s metered. And in a first, Apple will actually make the app available to Android. So basically, it works like most other services except unlike Spotify there is no free on-demand tier. You get access to radio with limited skipping with just an Apple account. With an Apple Music membership, you get the whole shebang.

More from TIME Magazine:

Only about about 15% of Spotify’s 60 million users pay for the service, but their subscription fees make up around 90% of the company’s revenue. That small but highly lucrative slice of Spotify users is exactly what Apple is after with Apple Music. After all, those users have already shown they’re willing to fork over 10 bucks a month for unlimited tunes. And there’s no penalty for switching: Spotify charges month-to-month with no cancellation fee, so users aren’t locked in to the service. This also explains why Apple’s rolling out an Android version of Apple Music — to go after more of Spotify’s user base. If Apple converts enough of Spotify’s paid users, it could totally decimate Spotify’s business. But the biggest advantage Apple Music will have is even simpler than all that: It will be automatically installed when iPhone users upgrade to iOS 8.4 later this month, while iPhones sold with that software on board will have the app pre-installed.

Here's the first ad for Apple Music.