On April 1, 2016, Apple turned 40. The company's music streaming service, Apple Music, is celebrating the milestone with a special playlist, titled 'Apple 40', that includes forty songs from various Apple ads to “celebrate 40 years of ideas, innovation and culture.”
Some of the songs included in the playlist come from Steve Jobs's favorite artists—Bob Dylan and The Beatles—in addition to other artists such as Coldplay, Gorillaz and more.
Pop artist Taylor Swift, whose public critique of Apple Music not originally paying out royalties to artists for free trials did force Apple to change its stance, is now the star of the latest commercial for the subscription streaming-music service.
In a comical 60-second video, published this morning on Beats 1's YouTube channel and aptly titled “Taylor vs. Treadmill”, the singer preps for a cardio workout.
She browses workout playlists on Apple Music and then sings along to a track by Drake and Future for a while before falling off the treadmill while still continuing to rap along, with the tagline describing Apple Music as “distractingly good”.
Apple has extended its partnership with cultural news network Vice to release a new docu-series on local music scenes around the world, TechCrunch reported Wednesday. The six-episode series will be called “The Score,” with the first episode taking a look at a techno scene in South Africa and hip hop coming straight out of Minnesota’s Native American nations.
Subsequent episodes will cover local music scene in Brazil, Iceland, Vietnam and other countries, with accompanying playlist for each episode being promoted on Apple Music.
In an interview yesterday with Vice's music channel Noisey, Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe said that Apple permits Beats 1 hosts to play whatever they want in their designated slot.
Apple's official policy, Lowe said, doesn't call for any restrictions pertaining to shows by Beats 1 hosts such as Dr. Dre, Pharrell, Major Lazer, and other hip-hop artists who have regular shows on the service.
A native of New Zealand's Auckland, Lowe revealed how Apple executive and former Beats 1 founder Jimmy Iovine gave him an important career advice, talked life in Los Angeles, having his own show on Beats 1 and more.
Apple yesterday announced via the official Beats 1 Twitter handle that the service will debut a new show by Joel Thomas Zimmerman, the popular music producer and performer also known under his stage name 'deadmau5'.
The upcoming show is named “Mau5trap Presents” and is scheduled to debut on Apple Music's Beats 1 radio station this coming Friday, March 18, at 3pm PST / 6pm ET.
Billboard reported Tuesday that Apple Music has become the first streaming music service to include DJ remixes and mashups that had previously been absent from licensed services due to copyright issues.
“Thousands upon thousands cool mash-ups and hour-long mixes have effectively been pulled out of the underground and placed onto the world’s second-largest music subscription service,” reads the report.
Apple has refreshed the Radio tab within the stock Music app on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad with a dynamically updated Beats 1 banner along with live schedule, show details, host biographies, show artwork and other perks.
As first noted by 9to5Mac, the Beats 1 banner in the Radio section now updates automatically to show the currently-airing live radio show along with information like the show's airing location and artwork.
The music controls from the Lock screen and Control Center leave a lot to be desired, which is why iOS jailbreak tweak developer Ron Thakrar has launched an excellent extension for the music controls.
Dubbed Seeker, this extension for jailbroken devices brings an array of new features to the music controls in the aforementioned interfaces and can be had from Cydia's BigBoss repository for the price of $2.99.
Apple on Monday announced that its Beats 1 radio station will be live-streaming a concert for the band The 1975 this week. The news comes via the official Twitter and Snapchat accounts for Apple Music, which had been teasing the event all day with posts of band lyrics and set photos.
The concert will take place on a rooftop in Los Angeles, on Thursday, February 25 at 9am (PST). The band is expected to play songs from their new album "I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It, but it's unclear if the stream will be audio-only, or video.
The rumored Apple-backed television show “Vital Signs” will feature some notable Apple Music product placement, as per sources who spoke to Re/code's Peter Kafka.
Rather than being Apple's surprise foray into full-scale production of TV shows, Apple will simply co-finance the production of “Vital Signs.”
“That’s much less exciting than 'Apple Is Getting Into TV,' but it’s more accurate,” Kafka said. The show will apparently star Beats co-founder and Apple executive Dr. Dre.
It appears that Kanye West's highly anticipated new album "The Life of Pablo," isn't going to be available on Apple Music anytime soon. Amidst a tweet storm Monday afternoon, the controversial artist stated that the album will "never never never be on Apple."
West added that he has no plans to offer TLOP for sale either, and that the only way fans will be able to listen to the record is through Tidal—the streaming music service backed by Jay-Z, Beyonce, Rihanna, and other high profile musicians across various genres.
Apple Music and Sonos teamed up to release a new television spot on Monday night, promoting their recently-announced partnership. The ad, which debuted during the Grammy Music Awards, features products from both brands, as well as a handful of music stars.
We've embedded the ad below, but for a little context, the stars you see are Killer Mike, a hip-hop artist and part of the popular duo Run the Jewels; Matt Berninger, frontman for indie rock band The National; and Annie Clark, better known by her stage name St. Vincent.