Apple’s revamped music streaming service

Predicted to be released in late June after being announced at WWDC 2015 in San Francisco, Apple’s revamped music streaming service has just started hitting the next level of tech rumor mills.

While the company is said to be working on last minute record label deals in order for the service to be launched as part of iOS 8.4 and iTunes 12.2.  The current iTunes Radio was announced at WWDC on June 10th, 2013, with the service launching on September 18, 2013, the same day as iOS 7. Available across all Apple devices, it is currently only available in the US and Australia.

Apple purchased Beats Music for $3 Billion dollars last year with the speculated intent of using the brains behind it to not only revamp their music streaming service – but become the best in the business, beating out (ha) other popular moneymakers such as Pandora, Spotify, Tidal, etc.

The revamped service will purportedly be available in additional countries, welcoming a new design, the ability to pay for unlimited song skipping, streaming from music and playlists stored offline, manually created playlists instead of ones using an algorithm.

The beta version of the service has already been seeded to developers as part of iOS 8.4, however we assume (read: hope) that there will be a few tricks up Apple’s  sleeve in order to lure and win over customers, some wow-factor music streaming goodies that have yet to be even whispered about yet.

You will reportedly be able to trial the service for free before signing on the line for about $8-$10 a month.

App of the Day!

We’ve all heard about Spotify and Pandora and ReverbNation and Vevos and iTunes Radio and alllll the rest of them and they’re all pretty wonderful and everyone usually has their staunch favorite, (as do we) but we want to introduce a little newbie to the gang. He deserves some love too!

Please, a welcoming round of applause for Rormix.

A music video streaming app that aims to delight your visual and aural senses, yes, but also to introduce you bands that you won’t hear or see on the other guys (yet). See, Rormix is for unsigned bands.

Once downloaded, the app will scan your song library so that it can provide appropriate recommendations. Within a few seconds you get your first selection of videos.

And then you enjoy some new talent. Dance, if you like.

Because the video’s are unsigned, of course, you can’t buy the tracks yet, which is a bummer. What you can do is favorite them, click through to the artists’s social media and post the video onto your own social media. You’re being entertained, and you’re doing PR in return by telling people how great the artist is. Like a rainbow circle of karma!

Starting this month, this idea goes further into the matrix – as users make comments and share the content, they can earn points. With a certain number of these points, you can download tracks for a period of time. Score more points and you can keep the music on your device, for longer.

The App then places high-scorers’ recommendations above those of others, and points can qualify the user for some awesome perky premiums such as free concert tickets from the company.

So, interested in being the ultimate cool kid? Listening to and watching some awesome unsigned talent first? Being the pointsmaster? Being in control of helping new talent emerge?

You know what to do.  It’s available for free from the App Store.