Apple Is Doing Their Best To Break Into Music Streaming

If there’s one industry that Apple hasn’t broken into yet, it’s music streaming. Over the past few years, music streaming services like Pandora, Spotify, and Soundcloud have rapidly been growing in popularity, and in terms of making money, it’s a great industry to indulge in. So, Apple is going to give it a shot, and they’re gunning hard for those popular streaming services.

At their annual Worldwide Developers Conference, the technology giant announced their concept for “Apple Music,” which will be available to everyone on June 30^th.

The monthly subscription cost? $9.99 however, they’re also offering a family plan where you can have up to six family members, and that’s $14.99 a month.

What Do You Get With Apple Music?

• Access to your personal iTunes music library.
• An internet radio service called “Beats 1.”
• Ability to stream everything within the iTunes store in what Buzzfeed called a “revamped music app.”
• It’ll even be available for Android by fall.

The iTunes Radio Bust

Now, Apple has tried the whole music thing before. Back in 2013, they released their iTunes radio that was meant to compete with Pandora, but alas, it didn’t really land with the consumer. However, 2013 wasn’t their first time. In 2010, they tried to release a service called “Ping,” but that only stayed afloat for two years.

Their new radio service, Beats 1 got its title from when Apple bought Beats Music in 2014 for a grand total of $3 billion. Along with Beats 1, the new music app will feature a social networking service called “Connect.”

Connect will be a platform where artists can interact with their listeners and share content and other forms of multimedia. Similar to what MySpace was back in the day, which is where several popular musicians today got their start (Drake included). However, it’s still a long shot because Apple is really late to the music streaming game.

• Pandora – 80 million subscribers
• Spotify – 60 million subscribers (15 million of which pay monthly)

So it really will all come down to marketing and word of mouth because it could take a lot for those subscribers to switch over to a new service, and a new service where you have to pay.

Regardless of whether Apple Music takes off or not, the company is still making its fair share of money within the tech world. Within the first quarter of 2015, they sold 74 million iPhones, so we think they’ll do just fine either way.