Apple’s New Music Streaming Service To Launch In June

Last year, Apple bought Beats Music to the tune of $3 billion. But since completing its acquisition, the company has been relatively quiet about its plans for the Beats Music streaming service. 

Still, there were some developments reported in the past few months. In September of last year, it was reported that Apple was planning to discontinue Beats Music and rebrand the music streaming services as part of the company's iTunes. By November, we heard that Apple might be automatically installing the re-branded Beats Music service on all iOS devices in 2015. And just last month, news broke out that Apple was looking to integrate the music streaming service into multiple platforms that include iOS, iTunes, and even Apple TV.

Just recently, 9to5Mac is reporting that a new overhauled version of Beats Music will be launching in June, specifically during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, which is held yearly.

Even though Beats Music will now likely be heavily modified, i.e. Apple-branded, it will still retain some of the attributes that made it appealing to music lovers everywhere. Thus, personalization features and the ability to recommend music will still be present. But now as an Apple product, it will be combined with the iTunes brand and will be integration across the entire iOS ecosystem.

Essentially, Apple is morphing Beats Music into a new and improved iTunes. It will feature uniquely curated playlists, music libraries stored in the cloud, and most importantly, customization capabilities that should delight every musicphile out there. And while it is designed primarily for the iOS platform, Apple is open to the idea of offering it across platforms, including those that do not run on iOS. There are also reports that Apple has been busy inking deals with various music labels in order to further boost its catalogue of songs. 

The newly revamped Apple music streaming service is said to be available for subscription for $7.99 a month. This rate should give Apple some pricing leverage -- other music streaming service providers like Rdio and Spotify have far higher rates.

Via iTunes, millions of Apple users are already listening to music. But Apple is clearly reaching out further to those who own Apple devices but are not yet subscribed to any form of music streaming service. This is where the new and enhanced Apple music streaming service comes in. It will provide iOS users with easy access to music regardless of what Apple device they are using. And it's not just the iOS users, Apple could offer its music streaming service to other platforms like Android and Windows.