Apple’s worldwide developer conference (WWDC) kicked off in San Francisco Monday, with plans to improve upon Apple’s mobile pay, streaming and news.
Competing with music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Pandora and iHeartRadio apps, Apple revealed Apple Music, an on-demand music streaming service that also serves as a radio station and social network all in one.
The social network, called Connect, is focused on artists and performers, giving them a place to upload music videos, songs and photos to profiles that fans can search. Apple’s expansion of its Beats brand, Beats 1, will serve as its worldwide radio station with radio hosts in LA, New York and London.
Apple Music, which will include streaming capabilities for songs already in the iTunes store and music playlists curated by Apple, will debut June 30 at $9.99 per month. It also released the ad below, chronicling the history of music:
Trying to keep up with tech giants getting into the content world, Apple has launched Apple News. The app is similar to Flipboard in that it curates and aggregates articles from sources such as The New York Times, which will contribute 30 free articles per day to Apple News readers.
Readers can customize and format the app according to which news they prefer, and publishers have the opportunity to sell ads for the articles they contribute to the app.
Apple is also investing more in mobile pay, confirming Monday that Apple Pay will begin rolling out loyalty programs with retailers such as Walgreens and JCPenney, expanding to more retailers including Dunkin’ Donuts this fall.
The former Passbook app also got an overhaul, with loyalty cards being added to the list of movie tickets and boarding passes. The app will now be known as Wallet.
Read more at Ad Age.
Brief Take: With this conference, Apple doubles down on music, a strong part of its business, but also curated content, a growing but uncertain sector of online browsing as it’s still not an easy place to monetize.
[Image courtesy of Apple]
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