Apple has kicked off a worldwide advertising campaign for its new streaming music service, with advertisements showing up in various cities like San Francisco, Tokyo, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Mexico City.
Billboards in San Francisco have been updated with new Apple Music ads, and the Omotesando and Harajuku Metro Stations in Tokyo have been updated with Apple Music banners. Some bus stops in Mexico City are also displaying Apple Music ads, and ads have also been seen on billboards in Los Angeles and Toronto.
The banners mimic images that have been used to advertise Apple Music on Apple's website, featuring desaturated pictures of artists overlaid with the Apple Music logo in a variety of different fonts.
It is not clear when Apple began its Apple Music advertising push, but the banners and signage appear to have gone up over the last few days. This is the first major advertising campaign for Apple Music since its June 30 launch and the first public ads, aside from videos that debuted at WWDC when the service was introduced.
As Apple begins heavily advertising Apple Music around the world, Billboard has announced that songs streamed from Apple Music will now count towards the Billboard 200 and the Billboard Hot 100. Apple was recently added as a streaming provider and Apple Music songs will influence the August charts.
The Billboard 200 lists the 200 most popular albums each week, based on direct sales, digital downloads, and on-demand streaming. The Billboard Hot 100 tracks individual songs or "singles" using the same methodology, ranking popularity on a weekly basis. New charts for both the Billboard 200 and the Billboard Hot 100 come out each Tuesday.
Other streaming providers that contribute to the charts include Amazon Prime, Google Play, Medianet, Rdio, Rhapsody, Slacker, Tidal, Spotify, and Groove Music Pass.
Top Rated Comments
Right now, everyone I know trying out Apple Music says the same things about it. On the plus side, they like the large music selection available. But they all have issues with slow syncing of data among multiple devices on a given iCloud account and there are too many rough edges. (EG. Often, I tap on a song to listen to it streaming and I see an icon with a little EQ with moving bars, indicating the music is playing - but i hear nothing. I've found I have to wait a good 10 or 15 seconds, sometimes, before it actually starts playing. But before I realized the animated EQ bars had no relation to what was actually happening, I kept cancelling and re-trying songs, thinking something went wrong.)