As if any confirmation were needed, the boss of Sony Music has claimed that Apple’s revamped music service will be launching at WWDC today.
Apple holds its annual Worldwide Developers Conference later today, and one of the top items on the agenda is widely expected to be Apple Music.
This new streaming service will rival Spotify, and will incorporate the Beats Music service that Apple acquired last year.
We were pretty certain that we’d be seeing Apple Music at WWDC, but with Apple’s TV plans going awry fairly late in the day we weren’t going to take anything for granted.
Now Sony Music CEO Doug Morris has confirmed that we’ll be seeing the Apple Music service today. “It’s happening tomorrow,” he told VentureBeat yesterday.
What’s more interesting is the music label head’s related comments on pricing models. While he didn’t comment specifically on Apple Music, his enthusiasm for the new Apple service tied to his more general comments that he much prefers paid subscription models to ad-supported ones suggests which way Apple is going here.
It had been widely expected that Apple would not feature a free tier for Apple Music, with iTunes Radio instead continuing to cater to the non-paying crowd.
As to what Apple can bring to this already competitive field, Morris was quite clear: “Well, they’ve got $178 billion dollars in the bank. And they have 800 million credit cards in iTunes,” he said.
He points out that Spotify has never really advertised its service to any great degree because it isn’t particularly profitable. With Apple’s unmatched cash reserves, Morris believes that “Apple will promote this like crazy,” which will have a “halo effect” on the rest of the streaming business.
Read More: WWDC 2015: What to expect
“A rising tide will lift all boats,” Morris said. “It’s the beginning of an amazing moment for our industry.”
We’ll find out more about this from 18:00 this evening when Tim Cook takes to the stage for his keynote address.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
