10 Things You Need to Know About Apple Music
Two weeks from today, Apple will turn on Apple Music in 100 countries including Canada. Here’s my article in today’s Metro papers on 10 things you should know.
Two weeks from today, Apple will fire up Apple Music, its long-awaited, much-hyped next step beyond iTunes in Canada and 99 other countries. By integrating music sales, music streaming, real-time Internet radio, social media and direct artist-fan connections, Apple has signalled it wants to be a bigger player in music than it’s ever been.
Much has been written about Apple Music since its official announcement earlier this month, but here are 10 things that you may have missed.
1. While there won’t be a free tier, you can sample the service for free for 90 days. Studies show that the vast majority of people who convert to the paid version do make the decision within 70 days.
2. Apple will not be paying artists royalties during the 90-day free trials, which is not unprecedented. Remember the Columbia Record Club’s 13-albums-for-a-penny offers? Record contracts specified that royalties were not paid on those loss-leader sales, either.
3. Today, Spotify is the biggest streaming music service with 20 million paid subscribers. But if Apple converts just three per cent of its 800 million iTunes account holders to Apple Music, they’ll be bigger.
Keep reading here.
So… This is the end of Apple’s Match Service?
Unclear
It says on the site that Match compliments Music. Seeing how Match is only for one account, and cannot be shared with other family members, Match may become obsolete if Music is a better value. That said, what will be the pricing in Canada for Apple’s streaming service?