Music

All BeatsX purchases come with three free months of Apple Music

Apple's W1-equipped BeatsX earphones with a new flexible neckband design should be available to purchase this Friday in Black or White along with a pair of new color options: Gray and Blue. A few hands-on videos have gone live ahead of the official launch.

Comparing BeatsX to AirPods, YouTuber Jonathan Morrison has discovered that all purchases of BeatsX come with a code that customers can redeem for three free months of Apple Music (on top of Apple Music's existing three-month free trial).

Apple hires Spotify’s former head of label relations

The Apple vs. Spotify fight just became tougher with news that Apple recently hired Spotify's former head of label relations, Steve Savoca, who left the company in August of last year (Spotify's current boss of label relations is Rob Harvey). He was recruited for the identical role at Apple Music.

The Cupertino firm on Thursday confirmed the hiring of Spotify's former executive, saying he'll be focusing on relationships with smaller, independent labels, especially internationally.

Which W1 chip-equipped audio device should you get?

Because Apple nixed the 3.5mm headphone jack from the bottom of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, you either have to use the supplied Lightning dongle for backwards compatibility with your 3.5mm audio accessories, or you have to kick it up to the new age with a pair of wireless or Lightning-enabled audio devices instead.

When you don’t want to be bothered with the issue of charging your device at the same time you're listening to audio with headphones or earbuds in, the obvious choice is to go wireless. While there are tons of options, only a few come with Apple’s brand new W1 chip, which supports the slick new Bluetooth pairing process. Among those are AirPods, Beats Solo3, and Powerbeats3.

If you’re in a predicament and can’t decide between the three then you should find this piece helpful, because I'll be comparing the strengths and weaknesses of each from a variety of angles.

LargeCCKnobs brings iOS 10-style slider knobs to your iOS 9 device

One of the things Apple changed from iOS 9 to iOS 10 is the size of the knobs that appear on the adjustment bars for volume level and song scrubber. The latter has larger knobs, which make grabbing onto them a little easier than in earlier versions of iOS.

If you’re jailbroken on iOS 9, and you want the same characteristics from iOS 10 to fall in your lap, then you’ll find a new free jailbreak tweak called LargeCCKnobs quite useful.

Sprint acquires 33 percent stake in Tidal, Jay Z’s Apple Music rival

U.S. wireless carrier Sprint announced Monday that it's buying one-third of Tidal, Jay Z's music-streaming service, in a bid to give customers exclusive content not available anywhere else. That's right, Tidal and its artists will produce exclusive content that will only be available to current and new Sprint customers.

While Sprint now owns 33 percent of Tidal, Jay Z & Co. will continue to run the artist-centric service. Sprint’s CEO Marcelo Claure will join Tidal’s Board of Directors.

Apple updates GarageBand and Logic Pro X with pro-level features, including Touch Bar support

Apple today updated its GarageBand and Logic Pro X apps with new features designed to support music makers “from enthusiasts to pros.” GarageBand for iOS 2.2 now provides the creative synthesizer Alchemy and has a new browser for easier searching through instruments and patches.

Logic Pro X 10.3 has been refreshed with a modern interface and now includes features for pro audio production and support for Touch Bar shortcuts on the new MacBook Pro.

CBS Sports Radio now available on Apple Music

CBS today announced that CBS Sports Radio is now available via a dedicated 24/7 radio channel for Apple Music members. This means that Apple Music subscribers can tune in to CBS's popular sports channel via the Music app on their iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Apple TV, no desktop using iTunes for Mac and Windows, via the official Apple Music app for Android and on Sonos speakers.

Jimmy Iovine: original TV series and movies part of Apple Music pop cultural experience

The Wall Street Journal thinks Apple wants to buy rights to original television shows and movies as another way of enticing users into choosing Apple Music over competitors like Spotify and Pandora. Monday, The Hollywood Reported published an interview with Apple executive Jimmy Iovine, who said that adding original video content to the music-streaming service is part of the plan to turn Apple Music into a pop cultural phenomenon.