Apple Music

Apple’s streaming music deals include permissions for additional Beats stations

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

Beats 1 may not be the only live radio station on Apple Music for long, reports The Verge. Citing sources with knowledge of the agreement, the outlet says that Apple's current music licensing contracts include permissions for up to five additional Beats radio stations.

"As part of the deal it struck with the major labels for Apple Music Radio," says The Verge's Micah Singleton, "Apple has licenses for up to five additional stations like Beats 1." So it could essentially create a lineup of 6 radio stations without needing to renegotiate.

Dr. Dre’s new album to premiere on Apple Music this Thursday

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

Dr. Dre's highly anticipated Compton will premiere on Apple Music this week, says Zane Lowe. The popular DJ and Beats 1 Radio host announced on Twitter this afternoon that the album will stream uncensored and exclusively this Thursday from 6pm to 9pm PDT.

This will be Dre's first new album in more than 15 years, succeeding Chronic 2001, which went sextuple platinum. He announced the record on his Beats 1 show "The Pharmacy" late last week, saying that the music was inspired by the new movie Straight Outta Compton.

Apple offering behind-the-scenes look at Beats 1 studios via Snapchat

Cody Lee ∙ Updated May 7, 2018

Apple on Wednesday launched an official AppleMusic Snapchat account. The company is promoting the venture on Instagram and other social networks, indicating that its first story offers an exclusive look at Beats 1 Radio.

You can find the story on Snapchat under the user name AppleMusic. The video is just over 200 seconds long, and it takes you on a quick tour of the three studios in Los Angeles, New York and London that keep Beats 1 going.

Poll: will you continue using Apple Music past the trial period?

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 14, 2018

Apple Music has been available for a little more than a month now and the service already has dozens, if not hundreds of problems to complain about which have earned it mixed reviews from the press.

Apple Music's biggest advantage, its tight integration with the rest of the Apple ecosystem, is being erased for some amid a flurry of issues, ranging from disappearing music, issues with DRM, user interface inconsistencies and poor implementation in iTunes, to mention just a few.

You've heard the horror stories and have hopefully played long enough with Apple Music in order to make an informed decision as to whether or not you'll continue using it once the free three-month trial expires.

How to hide Apple Music on your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Mac

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 1, 2017

Now that you've tried Apple Music thanks to Apple's generous three-month free trial, you may have decided that the service just isn't cut for you.

Though impossible to get rid of it completely, you can temporarily hide most of Apple Music's aspects.

Our previous tutorial has taught you how to disconnect from Apple Music's Connect feature and today's how-to lays out the steps to hide Apple Music on your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Mac and go back to the old way of enjoying music.

T-Mobile adds Apple Music to Music Freedom

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 28, 2015

T-Mobile has added Apple Music to the list of supported streaming services for Music Freedom, an initiative which allows subscribers to stream their favorite songs through services like Spotify, Pandora, Rdio and more, over T-Mobile's cellular network and without burning their 4G LTE data.

Hailed as T-Mobile's “last Un-Carrier Amped move of the summer,” Simple Choice customers can now enjoy Apple's streaming music service without worrying about Apple Music cellular data usage counting against their monthly 4G LTE allowance.

Apple Music reportedly signed up more than 10 million subscribers in its first month

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 28, 2015

A new report Tuesday by Hits Daily Double alleges that Apple's new streaming-music services has signed up more than ten million customers in its first four weeks. Citing “inside sources at some of the major labels,” the streaming statistics was reportedly shared with content owners by Apple itself.

Apple Music is free during its first three months, after which iTunes will charge customers' credit card on file $9.99 per month to continue using the service, or $14.99 for a family of six.

LyricForMusic: display song lyrics for Apple Music tracks

Jeff Benjamin ∙ July 22, 2015

Apple Music is great, but with all of the new music discovery it brings, you're bound to run into situations where you wish you had quick access to song lyrics. That's where a brand new jailbreak tweak called LyricForMusic comes into play.

LyricForMusic lends you nearly instant access to a song's lyrics simply by tapping on its album artwork. And this works, not only for the music that you own or for the music that you have saved locally to your device; it also works for music streamed directly from Apple Music's 30+ million song catalog.

iPod nano/shuffle won’t store your offline Apple Music collections due to piracy concerns

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 17, 2015

There will be no transferring your offline Apple Music collections onto the new iPod nano or iPod shuffle because Apple is overly concerned about piracy, as it should be, and so the company's decided to play it safe instead.

As 9to5Mac discovered Friday, attempting to transfer Apple Music songs marked for offline playback onto your nano or shuffle via iTunes produces a “some of the items in the iTunes library were not copied to the iPod because Apple Music songs cannot be copied to an iPod” message.

Of course, you can still sync your own songs that you imported into iTunes and music purchased on the iTunes Store, just like before, but Apple Music including songs marked for offline playback is off limits to the nano and shuffle.

How to restore DRM-laden Apple Music matched songs to DRM-free

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 13, 2015

Apple today released iTunes 12.2.1 which solves a few issue, among them an annoying bug that's been driving more than a few early adopters of Apple Music crazy.

For context, Apple's standalone $25 per year iTunes Match subscription is commonly used to legitimately replace matched songs in your library with DRM-free files from iTunes in the high-quality 256Kbps AAC format. Unfortunately, iTunes Match as part of Apple Music membership contains a flaw.

Even though Apple Music checks songs in your own library against its vast catalog, matched tracks get incorrectly labeled as Apple Music and wrapped inside FairPlay, Apple's proprietary DRM system. As a result, you're prevented from enjoying your own Matched music on non-Apple devices.

More importantly, Apple Music members who cancel their subscription may end up with DRM-protected matched tracks. Making matter worse, deleting a track in your Mac's original library for the purpose of re-downloading it as a 256Kbps AAC file will prompt Apple Music to incorrectly replace the original, non-DRM version with a DRM-laden file.

This was never intended behavior: a flaw causes iTunes to incorrectly label songs from Matched to Apple Music. But worry not, iTunes 12.2.1 comes to the rescue: release notes state that the update resolves an issue “where iTunes incorrectly changed some songs from Matched to Apple Music”.

Here're the steps you must take if your matched songs show up as DRM-protected Apple Music tracks.

Apple Music won’t auto-add streamed tracks to your Recently Played playlist

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 13, 2015

It's no secret Apple Music has some way to go before achieving feature parity between iOS and OS X.

Some crucial aspects of Apple Music on iOS have yet to make their way into iTunes for Mac and Windows PCs, and now Apple's $9.99 per month service was discovered to have been avoiding adding streamed songs to a Recently Played playlist.

As Kirk McElhearn noted, it's a huge, unexpected oversight on Apple's part because you should in fact be permitted to access a full history of what you have listened to, regardless of whether it's locally stored music or Apple Music files streamed to your computer or mobile device.

Apple now creating music videos and other original content in-house for Apple Music and iTunes

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated September 6, 2017

An Apple job listing seeking a seasoned Los Angeles, California-based Original Content Video Producer was discovered Monday, our best indication yet that the company is now creating original video content for both Apple Music and iTunes.

A proven track record in producing branded video content and content series for social platforms is required and the ideal candidate will work from Apple-owned Culver City campus, which belonged to Beats before the company was acquired last year by Apple for $3 billion.

Pitchfork recently said that Apple has actually been making music videos for select artists in-house.