Apple’s Music Streaming Service to Have Social Media Tools for Artists [Rumour]

Citing industry sources familiar with Apple’s plans, 9to5Mac reports that the forthcoming music streaming service will be called simply Apple Music and incorporate some social networking tools for artists.

Apple had launched a social networking system before allowing users to follow artists and friends to get music recommendations. It was called Ping, and Apple killed it some while ago, but it looks as though it kept the idea and is relaunching the service with better features.

The new Apple Music streaming service will allow artists to have landing pages and share track samples, photos, video, and more, sources say.

Actually, since Apple seeded the latest iOS 8,4 beta, this can be considered an open secret: If you are running the freshly released beta, go to Settings > General > Restrictions, and you’ll find a new section called “Artist Activity”.

This is said to be related to the forthcoming music streaming service’s rumoured social networking features. Since you have a toggle, you will be able to control whether you want to get information from the artists you follow.

Artists will also be able to share the content of other artists in an effort of cross-promotion. For example, all-gold Apple Watch wearer Kanye West could promote a new album from Taylor Swift on his “Apple Music” artist page, if he so chooses…

This highly anticipated music streaming service is expected to be introduced at this year’s WWDC. It won’t have a free tier as Spotify has, but customers will be able to enjoy free trials. Apple is said to offer a user experience similar to SoundCloud at a cost of $9.99.

Image credit: 9to5Mac