Apple on Wednesday launched an official AppleMusic Snapchat account. The company is promoting the venture on Instagram and other social networks, indicating that its first story offers an exclusive look at Beats 1 Radio.
You can find the story on Snapchat under the user name AppleMusic. The video is just over 200 seconds long, and it takes you on a quick tour of the three studios in Los Angeles, New York and London that keep Beats 1 going.
In what's become a norm for the company these days, another outage has hit a number of cloud-based services as users around the world report issues accessing Apple's content stores: the App Store, the Mac App Store and the iTunes Store.
We're also tracking issues with Apple Music and Beats 1.
Indeed, I'm currently struggling to stream my Apple Music songs and Beats 1 radio.
UPDATE 1: Apple has now acknowledged the outage on the iCloud status page. “Users are experiencing a problem with the services listed above,” reads the notice. “We are investigating and will update the status as more information becomes available.”
UPDATE 2: The iCloud dashboard says all services have been restored after three and a half hours of downtime.
Lots of ink was used in the run-up to Apple Music introduction regarding exclusive music deals that Apple has managed to negotiate with its favorite artists. And in addition to album exclusives, Apple's Beats 1 global radio is hosted by celebrity DJs and has already aired a few exclusive interviews.
And now, the 24/7 live-streaming radio station has partnered with Viacom-owned MTV to exclusively reveal nominees for the upcoming Video Music Awards (VMA), a move which suggests Apple's desire to position Beats 1 as the de facto source of both new music and industry events.
Apple's new music package, available across 115 countries around the world, packs in Apple Music Radio, Beats 1 Radio, iTunes Match and Apple Music on-demand streaming. But not all of these services are available in each and every country.
For example, people in Romania can only enjoy iTunes Match. Beats 1 Radio is currently off-limits in nearly two dozen countries. In addition, eight countries currently lack access to Apple Music, Apple Music Radio and Beats 1 Radio.
This article helps you find out in which countries you can join Apple Music, listen to Apple Music Radio (formerly iTunes Radio) and Beats 1 Radio or subscribe to iTunes Match.
Apple's new 24/7 radio station, Beats 1, went live this morning and is now in full effect. Initial feedback on the experiment is mixed—some people really like it, others don't—but the consensus is that Apple has managed to capture the essence of radio.
Keeping with that theme, Apple has announced that it's going to start taking listener requests for songs during at least a small segment of its Beats 1 broadcast. From the service's official Twitter account: "in a few hours, we turn the show over to you."
Beats 1, Apple's 24/7 radio station, has just started broadcasting live in over a hundred countries around the world following the release of iOS 8.4 with a much improved and revamped Music app with Beats 1 and Apple Music integration.
Available on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad with iOS 8.4 (and soon on Mac and Windows PCs with an impending iTunes update), Beats 1 is hosted by former BBC Radio DJ Zane Lowe in Los Angeles, with additional actors Ebro Darden in New York and Julie Adenoma in London.
Former Beats Music CEO Ian Rogers wrote in a blog post yesterday that iOS 8.4 with Apple Music will release for public consumption on Tuesday, June 30, at 8am Pacific / 11am Eastern. A few hours later, however, Rogers has updated his post removing mention of the specific timing.
“Tuesday morning we’ll be unveiling the next chapter,” reads the post. “Please make a note to upgrade to iOS 8.4 Tuesday, June 30 and listen to our first day of broadcasting.”
Rogers is now a Senior Director of Apple Music.
Apple's Beats 1 streaming radio service will feature celebrity hosts such as Pharrell Williams, Drake and Elton John, reports The New York Times. In a profile of Apple's newly recruited D.J., Zane Lowe, the outlet says a number of well-known stars have been given spots.
Other well-known stars on the menu for Beats 1 programming include Dr. Dre, who will host a show called "The Pharmacy," teen actor Jaden Smith, and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. Apparently, each of them will be hosting and planning the shows themselves.
According to an image that former BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe shared on Instagram and Twitter, Beats 1—Apple's new 24/7 Internet radio—will interview hip-hop artist and music producer Eminem as its first guest. Lowe is one of the there celebrity DJs on Beats 1. Lowe will be providing live radio programming from Los Angeles, with a little help from Ebro Darden in New York and Julie Adenoma in London.
Often referred to as The Crossroads of the World, New York City's Time Square is always brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements from the world's top brands. With less than a week until June 30 Apple Music launch, the iPhone maker is now advertising Beats 1 with a massive billboard.
It's dominated by enormous Beats 1 promotional graphics accompanied by the “Worldwide. Always on” tagline and the 6.30.2015 launch date. Interestingly enough, the Apple logo is nowhere to be seen on the advertisement, perhaps indicating the Cupertino firm might be counting on Beats' brand power to push the upcoming radio service into public consciousness.
Beats 1, Apple's non-stop Internet radio station hosted by celebrity DJs, has made its first appearance in latest betas of iOS 8.4 and iOS 9 which are available to developers.
The Beats 1 interface appears unfinished with many features not active yet or performing erratically. Still, I was able to use the Music app on my iPad running iOS 9 Developer Preview to access a new Radio tab and get to Beats 1. I also browsed a list of stations and even streamed select ones and heard the promotional Beats 1 broadcast.
Here are my screenshots.