SAN FRANCISCO: Apple is expected to unveil a ramped up music service Monday that builds on the iPhone maker´s strengths in a challenge to Spotify, Pandora and other established players.
In the biggest overhaul of iTunes since it was launched in early 2003, the service was set to include an option of subscribing to streaming music for $10 monthly.
Analysts and industry insiders say a rebranded “Apple Music” will be introduced on Monday during a keynote presentation kicking off the company´s weeklong Wordwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Sony Music Entertainment chief executive Doug Morris confirmed during an on-stage interview at Midem in Cannes that Apple was indeed poised to unveil “Apple Music” streaming service.
“Apple Music will be an Apple streaming company,” Morris said during an interview focused mostly on his rich career in the industry.
“I think it will make a big splash,” he continued. “It will have a halo effect on the entire business... a rising tide lifts all ships.”
Apple has ample money for advertising a streaming music service, and some 800 million credit cards already linked to iTunes accounts.
The popularity of iTunes and Apple devices means that a broad audience could be provided an easy way to simply switch on the new music service. “I absolutely think we will see a streaming music service,” Gartner analyst Van Baker told AFP.
“Apple is late to the game on this, but it may not matter.”
Morris reasoned that a boom in subscription streaming will pump cash into a music industry that has shrunk to $15 billion annually from $30 billion a decade ago.
“What is interesting about all the streaming services controlled by the tech companies is that they don´t work without music,” Morris told the audience at the trade event. “So, we are really in a great position.” While iTunes transformed
the way music was distributed and sold, it also put Apple in a position to build extensive relationships with labels and artists. Apple Music will likely have benefited from talent and technology acquired when Apple bought Beats Electronics and its streaming music service in a $3 billion deal in May last year.
An Apple streaming music service would grab headlines at an annual gathering at which the California-based company courts creators of fun, hip or functional apps that help drive the popularity of Internet-linked mobile devices.