As of this afternoon, many developers and public beta testers running the latest iOS 8.4 beta are seeing popups for Apple's upcoming Apple Music service within the Music app.
When opening the app, there's a popup for Apple Music that prompts users to start a three month free trial. Tapping on that option leads to another screen that lets users choose either an individual plan for $9.99 for a family plan for $14.99, but there's no way to actually sign up for a plan. Choosing a plan simply grays out the option and does not allow users to progress further in the signup process.
These options have been showing up for some users since the latest iOS 8.4 beta was seeded yesterday morning, but many more users are now seeing signs of the Apple Music service as Apple begins to implement backend tools to support subscription signups at launch.
Apple Music will launch on June 30 as part of iOS 8.4, and it will be built into the Music app. The full Apple Music experience includes an on-demand streaming music service, the Beats 1 radio station, and Apple Connect, a social networking service connecting fans and artists.
Thursday August 20, 2026 4:41 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple sent emails to its music industry partners about the upcoming launch of a Made With AI label that Apple will apply to AI-generated content (via The Hollywood Reporter).
Content tagged as being "materially generated using AI" will have a label visible to all Apple Music users.
In March, Apple announced Transparency Tags, a system that lets music creators disclose when AI has been...
Thursday September 3, 2026 3:41 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Less than a week before Apple debuts new iPhone 18 Pro models, research firm TrendForce has estimated the prices of the devices based on the latest hardware cost environment.
TrendForce's price estimates compared to last year's models look like this:
Model
Starting Price
Model
Starting Price
Change
iPhone 17 Pro
$1,099
iPhone 18 Pro
$...
Wednesday September 2, 2026 12:35 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple has added a new "iPhone Handoff" feature to iOS 27 that will allow you to switch between two iPhones while using the same phone number on each device.
This functionality was briefly mentioned during the WWDC 2026 keynote in June, on a slide that listed hundreds of new features coming in iOS 27 and corresponding software updates, but Apple never shared any further details at the time.
...
If the streaming quality isn't as good as Spotify's (320kbps) then there's not too much point many people switching over imo.
The bitrate of MP3 and AAC files should not be directly compared. A 256 kbps AAC sounds just as good (if not better) than a 320 kbps MP3. As a bonus you use less data.
I heard bad things about family sharing, hesitant to turn that on. Also, forget family sharing for a bit and think of single-user, wonder if it will let you login to multiple devices on the same account simultaneously. I know spotify doesn't.
Bad things? I have absolutely no problems with using Family Sharing.
If you do this in the UK the app says the pricing is £9.99 and £14.99. Very interesting as Im pretty sure this hasn't been announced / mentioned anywhere yet, only the US pricing.
