Apple’s Beats music subscription service will be launched in June at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) shindig. The upcoming “Spring Forward” reveal will focus chiefly on the new Apple Watch.
Various reports suggest the WWDC will take place between 8 June and 12 June this year.
Apple acquired Beats Electronics from Dr Dre and Jonny Iovine last May for US$3bn and the pair joined Apple. Apple has since been sprucing up its musical assets, hiring a renowned BBC DJ and tastemaker Zane Lowe as well as acquiring a London-based music software company Camel Audio.
Apple is believed planning to bundle the Beats music subscription service into an iOS update within the first half of 2015. It is also understood to be planning to make the Beats subscription service available across all platforms from Mac and PC to web, Android and Windows Phone devices.
The move makes sense since the entire music download market is in decline thanks to streaming, which is endangering Apple’s iTunes platform which has over 200m customers.
But how will Beats stack up against Spotify, Deezer, Pandora and Rdio? It is expected that Beats’ personalisation and recommendation features are going to help differentiate the new subscription service in the market.
It is expected that Apple will also aim to differentiate on price and according to 9to5mac the new music service will undercut Spotify and Rdio by US$2 to cost US$7.99 a month.
Let the Beats begin.
Beats image via Shutterstock
