Apple to Take on Spotify With $10 Monthly Streaming, Web Radio Programmed by Celeb DJs
The company will announce a new music streaming service at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday.
By Geoff Weiss •
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If Apple forever changed the music industry with the launch of iTunes in 2003, the company is now readying a giant splash into the ever-crowded streaming category, which has become the de rigeur mode of consumption among today's music consumers.
Apple already counts two streaming services, the relatively tiny Beats Music as well as its fledgling iTunes Radio -- a free, ad-supported platform that launched in 2013. At its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, however, Apple will unveil a revamped service to take down category leader Spotify.
The new, ad-free subscription service will be priced at $10 per month, The Wall Street Journal reports, and Apple is poised to cannibalize its iTunes sales -- which account for roughly 85 percent of all music downloads worldwide -- in order to push a new wave of streaming.
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Though Apple is a relatively late arriver to the category, where Spotify accounts for 86 percent of the U.S. market, it is hoping to convert the hundreds of millions of iTunes users for whom it already has credit cards on file, according to the Journal.
And much like Jay-Z's Tidal, Apple is mustering some serious star wattage to herald the announcement. Drake, Pharrell Williams and David Guetta could reportedly serve as DJs for a revamped version of iTunes Radio that will now feature programming hosted by DJs, according to Billboard.
Apple plans to continue running Beats as a separate service for the time being, the Journal reports, before eventually folding all of its users into the new platform.
Related: Apple's Beats Music Draws Antitrust Scrutiny Over Deals With Record Labels
