BackApple Music hits the perfect notes
It may be joining the party late, but Apple Music is always two steps ahead of its rivals
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The much-awaited Apple Music service is now available on your iPhones and other Apple Inc. devices—iPad, iPod Touch, Apple TV streaming box, on Apple Watch paired with a phone—and via iTunes on Windows and Mac OS X computers. In the iOS 8.4 version, the music app has been redone to include the music you have stored on your iPad as well as on-demand streaming and a Live radio.
At the moment, Apple Music is available as a three-month free trial available globally. In India, once the trial ends, it’ll be priced at ₹ 120 per month for an Individual plan and ₹ 190 per month for a Family Plan that allows sharing the subscription with six other users.
There is no doubt that Apple is arriving late on the subscription-based music streaming scene. Rival services such as Spotify (Premium: $9.99 per month), Tidal (Premium: $9.99 per month; Hi-Fi: $19.99 per month), Rhapsody (Premier: $9.99 per month) and Rdio (Unlimited: ₹ 119 per month) are available in various countries. In India, Apple is offering a much wider range of music and additional features than Saavn (Lite: ₹ 120 per month; Pro: $3.99 per month) and Gaana (Gaana Plus: $2.99 per month).
The likes of Spotify and Rhapsody just throw up a mishmash of excuses, such as geographical restrictions, for the unavailability of their services. Since Apple Music works in India on Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G, you wouldn’t encounter pop-ups telling you the service is “currently not available in your country".
Moreover, Apple is plugging Siri, its voice-based virtual assistant, to the service for some fun with the For You feature. The rival apps don’t have any such feature at the moment, on Android or iOS, and there are two reasons for that. One, they don’t control the hardware on phones, which makes integration a tad difficult. Two, they perhaps don’t have algorithms smart enough to work well with generic voice commands. Tell Apple Music something on the lines of “play the top 10 trance songs" or “play rock songs from 1985", and it’ll automatically retrieve music that matches the search criteria. How quickly that happens will depend on the Internet connection speed. Also, users can select from a range of genres and artists (no restrictions on either), choices that Apple will consider when curating after a voice command.
Users can save unlimited number of songs to play them when offline.
Then there is Beats 1, a 24-hour live radio station. Beats 1 will play the same music, have the same playlists and the same host, at the same time for everyone worldwide. From what we could judge over the few hours after it went Live, the range of music is wide and addictive. The Connect section lets artists share lyrics, backstage photos, songs and videos with fans, who can comment and communicate with the artists through it .
Perhaps, the fact that Apple waited to introduce this service could turn out to be a blessing in disguise for it. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the global subscription streams revenue for the year 2014 was $1.57 billion, a 39% increase over the $1.13 billion in 2013. While there were 28 million paid subscription users in 2013, that number jumped to 41 million in 2014, a 46.4% increase. While subscription-based music streaming format is recent, supportive conditions like better broadband and mobile network connectivity, increasing smartphone uptake and changing lifestyles are helping it grow quickly.
Apple does have the advantage of a captive audience—more than 800 million iTunes accounts are active globally, making it easier for people to subscribe. The service is seamlessly integrated in the Music app on the iPhone or iPad, which makes it even more attractive for people to sign up for the complete package. Plus, the beautiful interface of Music is way ahead of what the rival apps are offering. When they up their game, Apple will push the benchmark further with iOS 9. By the time the trial period is over, people will be more or less used to having this service around. Plus, Apple Music will be coming to Android phones later this year, and tapping that massive user base will give the service a mind-boggling fillip.
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