Music can play a major role in elevating video games from being a good game, to a great one. Sadly, access to video game music – especially from Japan – has historically been limited. Fortunately, SEGA has been much more proactive with bringing its OSTs to music streaming services in …
Read More »Apple becomes latest company to hike up subscription prices
Apple's subscription prices have held firm over the last year but prices are now going up. Soon, Apple TV Plus, Apple Arcade, Apple News Plus and the Apple One subscription bundle will all see substantial price increases. Starting with Apple TV Plus, the service is going from £6.99 per month …
Read More »Spotify may charge extra for HiFi ‘lossless’ audio streaming
For many years, Spotify has offered a higher bit-rate option to premium subscribers, but it has not caught up to other streamers offering ‘lossless' audio streaming. That should change soon with Spotify HiFi, but it may mean paying extra. According to Bloomberg, Spotify is now planning a new, more expensive …
Read More »Kingdom Hearts soundtracks finally added to music streaming services
For more than two decades the Kingdom Hearts series has gifted fans with countless beloved songs. Unfortunately, as with many video game OSTs those paying for premium music streaming services were unable to listen to any of it – having to resort to fan covers of the iconic soundtrack. Finally …
Read More »Apple Music comes to Xbox one year after PlayStation
Video game consoles are much more than simple game-playing apparatus, they are multimedia systems offering games, films, shows, internet, and of course music. That being said, those subscribed to Apple’s Music subscription service have been unable to listen to music while gaming – at least on Xbox. Fortunately, this is …
Read More »Apple Music begins rolling out lossless audio and Dolby Atmos streams
Apple Music is getting a huge upgrade today, as Apple is now enabling lossless audio streams, in addition to spatial audio streams powered by Dolby Atmos. This update makes Apple Music one of the few streaming services to offer lossless audio, rivalling the likes of Tidal. Today, Apple Music officially …
Read More »Apple Music to upgrade to lossless audio and offer ‘Spatial Audio’ streams
Up to this point, very few music streaming services have offered lossless audio. Apple Music, YouTube Music and Spotify all offer ‘high quality' streaming options, which usually means 320Kbps MP3 files, while Tidal stood alone offering a lossless audio tier. Now, Apple Music is jumping on that wagon and will …
Read More »EU finds Apple in breach of competition law, sides with Spotify
Earlier this week, it was reported that the European Commission would bring antitrust charges against Apple soon for breaking competition laws. Now, everything is official, with the commission finding that Apple is “in breach of EU competition law” with its 30 percent revenue cut and other iOS policies. The EU …
Read More »Spotify set to finally get Siri support in iOS 13
Earlier this year, Spotify began taking aim at Apple with claims of anti-competitive behaviour and calling for an EU anti-trust investigation. Aside from the 30% iOS App Store tax, one of Spotify's complaints was a lack of Siri support for its competing music streaming service and now several months later, …
Read More »The EU will reportedly investigate Apple over Spotify’s anti-competitive complaint
Back in March, we learned that Spotify had filed a new complaint with the European Union's antitrust regulators, claiming that Apple's App Store rules were anti-competitive. Spotify publicised this by putting out the open letter ‘Time to Play Fair', which Apple swiftly responded to and tackled point by point. Now, …
Read More »EU ends anti-trust investigation, allowing Apple to continue acquiring Shazam
Apple announced its $400m (£300m) acquisition of music service Shazam at the end of last year, prompting the EU to conduct full-fledged investigation into anti-trust complaints. Months later, the EU has ended its probing of the deal, concluding that the purchase would remain fair to competition in the digital music …
Read More »Apple Music has racked up 27 million subscribers
It has been around two years since Apple first launched ‘Apple Music', its own streaming service set to take on Spotify. Since then, the service has expanded into offering original video content in addition to music and it appears to be paying off nicely, with 27 million people now subscribed. This …
Read More »Apple might also be acquiring Tidal
It has been almost a year since Apple first launched Apple Music, which was first put in the works after the company acquired Dr Dre's Beats for $3 billion. Now, Apple is setting its sights on Tidal, the high-fidelity music streaming service that has been spear-headed by Jay Z since he …
Read More »Apple Music looks to court students with 50 percent off membership
Apple Music isn't doing as well as the higher ups want, even though it managed to net itself 10 million+ users by the start of this year. To try and improve those numbers even more, Apple is giving the service a full makeover for later this year and is offering …
Read More »Apple Music reportedly has 10 million subscribers
Apple Music seems to be doing quite well for itself according to new reports, with sources claiming that the service has already managed to garner up ten million subscribers. This is half that of Spotify, which is reported to have around 20 million paying subscribers though it has been around …
Read More »Apple raises iTunes Match/Apple Music library limit to 100K tracks
Apple has gone ahead and raised the iTunes Match and Apple Music library limit from 25,000 tracks all the way up to 100,000. This update has been a long time coming, with Apple's Vice President of software, Eddy Cue, revealing back in June that this feature was being planned out. …
Read More »Apple is finally shutting down Beats Music
It was big news last year when Apple bought out Beats Music, but the service kept running for some time while Apple figured out what to do with the acquisition. Now that Apple Music is finally out and is steadily building up its own subscriber base, it is time for …
Read More »Apple Music now has 6.5 million paying subscribers
When Apple announced its music streaming platform, Apple Music earlier this year, many thought it might struggle, as it was entering an already saturated space. While iTunes was once the darling of the listening world, it had fallen behind the times and industry giants like Spotify and Pandora stomped around …
Read More »Spotify might limit free streaming from next year
It looks like Spotify might be preparing to limit its free streaming tier from early 2016 onwards in order to keep record labels signed on to the service. Spotify is apparently facing pressure from labels, including Sony and Universal to offer less music in the free tier in order to …
Read More »EU clears Apple of anti-competitive behaviour with Apple Music
Earlier this year, ahead of Apple Music's initial announcement, the European Commission launched an investigation in to Apple's business practises leading up to the streaming service's launch. At the time, the EU suspected that Apple may be resorting to anti-competitive tactics in order to get an edge over competing companies. …
Read More »Facebook denies reports that it is building a music service
This week, there have been rumours floating around stating that Facebook would be joining the likes of Apple, Spotify, Google and Microsoft in the music streaming game with a service of its own. The service was touted to launch at some point over the next few months however, it seems …
Read More »Apple Music and iOS 8.4 arrive today
Apple is all set to launch Apple Music later on today, alongside the latest iOS update, bumping things up to iOS 8.4. Right now everything is expected to launch at 4PM here in the UK or 8am PST in the US. iOS 8.4 will début the new music app for …
Read More »Apple secures indie label contracts for Apple Music
Apple has managed to secure quite a coup in the build up to the release of its Apple Music streaming service. Following a fallout with Taylor Swift over royalties not being paid to artists during a free trial period, Apple reversed the policy and has now signed on some of …
Read More »Google brings free ad-supported tier to Play Music
Apple Music is less than a week away at this point and is set to cause a stir in the music streaming business. In order to grab the largest audience, Apple is not limiting its service to iOS either, it is sending the streaming app out to Android as well, …
Read More »UMG denies collusion with Apple in antitrust investigation
Ahead of Apple's official announcement for its new music streaming service, it was reported that the company was already at work trying to pressure labels in to withdrawing support for Spotify and its advert based business model. As a result, the European Commission and the FTC both began probing the …
Read More »Spotify not concerned about Apple Music
Showing just the right measure of confidence and indifference, Spotify has stated that it isn't concerned about the recently unveiled Apple Music, which perhaps offers the most legitimate threat to the streaming provider. It's not because it thinks the new service won't be successful though, but because in reality it …
Read More »Apple Music under investigation for anti-trust practices
Apple Music is barely off of the ground and already it's under investigation by the attorney generals of two separate US states, for potential anti-trust practices. Both New York and Connecticut are looking into Apple's affairs, to see if it offered incentives or threatened music labels into supporting its new …
Read More »Spotify will match Apple Music’s family sharing option
Last night at the World Wide Developer Conference, Apple went ahead and officially announced its long expected music streaming service, known as Apple Music, bringing some pretty heavy competition to Spotify's door. In an effort to stay competitive, Spotify has revealed that it will be matching one of Apple's subscription …
Read More »Apple formally announces streaming music service
Even though we've known its intentions for months, with rumours that the whole reason the Beats headphone brand was purchased was to pick up its fledgling streaming business, Apple has finally, officially, launched Apple Music. The new service will offer a combination of music streaming, downloads and internet radio and is …
Read More »Sony CEO says we we will see Apple Music at WWDC
We have been expecting an Apple Music streaming service announcement for some time now and even though negotiations with certain record labels slowed things down a bit, all signs still pointed towards a reveal at Apple's annual World Wide Developer Conference this month. Now, it seems that Sony's CEO has …
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