Tag: Apple Music

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Mobile Syrup

Rivian confirms Apple Watch, Music integration is being “actively looked into”

Electric vehicle maker Rivian has confirmed it’s working on integrating certain Apple services into its products. In a recent Q&A highlighted by Rivian Forums user teddyang, the car maker went into some detail.

The company plans on introducing the option to unlock its R1T and R1S models using an Apple Watch as the key. Apple Music integration is also being worked on, according to Wassym Bensaid, head of software and development at Rivian. An exact timeline for introducing these features wasn’t mentioned, however.

On the Apple CarPlay front, it seems that Rivian is opting to create its own proprietary system. Infotainment, navigation, and notifications are some of the duties the company seems to want to stay in total control of.

Whether Rivian can build out a compelling alternative to CarPlay is something only time will tell. In the meantime, Bensaid says the company is working on improving its in-house voice assistant service.

More information on the recent Q&A session can be found here.

Source: Rivian Via: 9to5Mac

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Mobile Syrup

Apple Music Classical brings Mozart to your iPhone on March 28

‘Apple Music Classical,’ Apple’s standalone app for classical music, launches on March 28th as part of its Apple Music subscription.

Anyone on the ‘Individual,’ ‘Student,’ ‘Family’ or ‘Apple One’ plan will get access to the app.

At launch, Apple Music Classical will be available on all iPhones that run iOS 15.4 or later. Further, an Android version of the app is”coming soon.”

Apple says the Music Classical’s catalogue offers more than five million tracks, from “celebrated masterpieces” to new releases and includes thousands of exclusive albums, the ability to search by composer, work, conductor and even catalogue number.

The platform offers up to 192kHz/24-bit Hi-Res Lossless audio alongside spatial audio. Apple says the app features complete and accurate metadata, so you know what work and artist is playing.

The tech giant is also working with classical music artists and renowned classical music institutions worldwide to offer Apple Music Classical listeners new unique, and exclusive content.

Back in August 2021, Apple acquired classical music streaming service Primephonic, but quickly shuttered it in order to release its own app.

You can check out the Apple Music Classical trailer here.

Image credit: Apple

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Mobile Syrup

Native Apple Music and Apple TV apps for Windows available now

At its annual Surface event in 2022, Microsoft announced that Windows users would soon be able to download native Apple TV and Apple Music applications on their Windows machines. Now, the first previews of the applications are starting to appear.

First reported by The Verifier, via MacRumours, the two applications are accompanied by an app called ‘Apple Devices,’ which allows users to manage and sync their Apple devices, including iPhones, iPads and iPods, directly from their Windows machines. Find the links for the native app previews below:

It’s worth noting that all three new native Apple apps require Windows 11 version 22621.0 or higher to be able to run. MobileSyrup hasn’t been able to download the applications as of yet. When trying to follow the links mentioned above, the application says it is only available on Xbox Series X/S and on Xbox One. However, other publications, including 9toMac and The Verge, were able to download the apps without an issue.

Further, Apple states in the app descriptions that some features may not function as intended as these are preview versions of the apps. The company also cautioned that installing these apps will prevent iTunes for Windows from opening, making other forms of content, such as audiobooks and podcasts, inaccessible until a compatible version of iTunes is released or the preview apps are uninstalled.

Are you able to download the native Apple app previews? Let us know in the comments below.

Image credits: Microsoft Store

Source: The Verifier, via MacRumours

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Mobile Syrup

Apple Music adds more lyrics for karaoke superfans with ‘Sing’

If you love to sing, Apple Music has just become the best music streaming service for you.

A new feature called Apple Music Sing releases later in December and will work with tens of millions of songs at launch, with more coming over time, says Apple. To help make it easy to find songs that support the feature, the tech giant says it will also launch over 50 playlists highlighting songs that you can sing along with.

It makes the existing lyric functions act more as you’d expect from a karaoke machine. This means the words highlight along with the beat, and you can remove or lower the vocals from a song.

Other perks include separate lyrics for background vocals and duets. Songs with background lyrics will have smaller text to signify they’re to be sung in the background. Tracks with duets will feature verses justified to the right and the left, with each side denoting a different vocalist.

This feature will launch on all Apple products that support lyrics (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV), but it shines on Apple TV. While this might not be a huge draw for everyone, karaoke machines are often expensive and can become outdated fast. Getting 90 percent of the functionality from an iPad or Apple TV as part of your existing Apple Music subscription could be a huge selling feature for many people.

Overall, Apple Music now offers a compelling radio feature, great lyrics and Hi-Fi audio, giving it much more value than Spotify, though it does cost an extra dollar per month.

Image credit: Apple

Source: Apple

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Mobile Syrup

Apple Music’s yearly Replay gets a notable redesign

Apple Music has launched its yearly recap of the tracks you’ve listened to over the past year, Replay.

This year, Apple has opted to redesign the experience to be far sleeker, though it’s not quite as impressive as Spotify’s annual Wrapped.

First off, there’s now an Instagram ‘Stories’ like highlight reel, allowing you to view how many minutes you’ve listened to music this year, along with your favourite artists, songs, albums and playlists (the overall experience is very similar to Spotify’s Wrapped). Further, along with checking out your Replay stats through the Apple Music app, you can also view them on desktop. Interestingly, Replay also includes the top 100 listeners for specific artists.

The platform’s year-end also includes the most Shazamed songs of the year as part of its year-end top artists and tracks list.

It’s unclear when Spotify’s Wrapped will launch, but given Replay has already arrived, we’ll likely see it soon. YouTube Music recently launched its personalized end-of-year list.

Source: Apple

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Mobile Syrup

Tesla museum exhibit showcases Apple Music app

A museum exhibit in Los Angeles is currently showcasing several prototype Tesla vehicles like the Roadster and Cybertruck. However, one small feature that originally went noticed is that these cars are running pre-production software that has an Apple Music app.

Tesla has been insistent on integrating apps into its system instead of relying on Android Auto or CarPlay like most other major brands. This is both good and bad, but for music fans, it results in a rather limited selection of high-quality streaming apps.

However, in 2019 Spotify was finally added, and Tidal hit the platform in 2021. Now, it appears that Apple Music might be the next music streaming service to land on Tesla.

There’s no concrete release date for this feature, but the company generally releases a larger holiday feature update, and it may be part of that, according to a tweet from Teslascope.

This update has been a long time coming since Apple Music is already available to users with certain models of Mercedes and Porsche cars. One notable exception is that Apple has split podcasts out of the Apple Music app, so it’s unlikely that this app will play podcasts.

You can read more about the Tesla exhibit on the Peterson Museum’s website.

Source: Electrek, Reddit (TeslaModel11)

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Mobile Syrup

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate offering free 3-month subs to Apple TV+, Apple Music

Xbox is offering free three-month subscriptions to Apple TV+ and Apple Music to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members.

The promotion is available to worldwide Ultimate subscribers who don’t currently have a subscription to either Apple TV+ or Apple Music. The free trials are being offered as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Perks, which provide subscribers with free bonuses like downloadable content packs for miscellaneous games and, on occasion, trials for services like Discord Nitro and Disney+.

Last month, the starting monthly costs of Apple TV+ and Apple Music were both increased $8.99 (previously $5.99) and $10.99 (previously $9.99), respectively. Normally, Apple only offers a free seven-day Apple TV+ trial and one-month Apple Music trial. Game Pass Ultimate members can claim and activate both free trials from now until March 31st, 2023.

Apple Music offers unlimited streaming of more than 100 million songs, while Apple TV+ features a slew of original TV shows and movies, including Ted Lasso, Mythic Quest, The Morning Show, Severance, CODA and the upcoming Ryan Reynolds movie, Spirited.

Meanwhile, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate costs $16.99/month and includes Game Pass for console and PC, EA Play, Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Image credit: Apple TV+

Source: Xbox

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Mobile Syrup

Apple increases cost of Apple Music, Apple TV+ and Apple One in Canada

Apple has officially confirmed that it’s increased the cost of several of its services, including Apple Music, Apple TV+ and Apple One.

Each price increase is relatively substantial, with the base-level Apple Music subscription going up by $1, Apple TV+ jumping by $3 and Apple One increasing by $3. Other than increasing the cost of its Apple Music ‘Student’ plan by $1 back in June, 2022, this is the first time the tech giant has increased the cost of these services in Canada.

Below is a full price breakdown of all of the increases in Canada:

Apple Music

Individual: $10.99 (previously $9.99)
Family: $16.99 (previously $14.99)
Annual: $109 (previously $99)

Apple TV+

Monthly: $8.99 (previously $5.99)
Annual: $89 (previously $59.99)

Apple One

Individual: $18.95 (previously $15.95)
Family: $24.95 (previously $20.95)
Premier: $37.95 (previously $33.95)

While these price increases are likely tied to inflation, Apple TV+’s price jump is the least surprising given the amount of content the platform currently offers compared to its launch in Canada back in 2019. While AppleTV+ launched with a disappointing line-up or originals, content like Severance, Ted Lasso, See, For All Man Kind and more round out the platform’s offerings.

Apple One’s $18.95 base-level subscription includes Apple Music, Apple TV+ Apple Arcade and iCloud (50GB), its $24.95 Family plan features all of the same platforms but with 200GB of iCloud storage. Finally, ‘Premiere,’ includes everything in the other Apple Once tiers, alongside News+, Fitness+ and 2TB of iCloud storage.

Regions these services are available in outside of Canada are also getting similar price hikes. Current subscribers will receive notifications of the price increase before the service renews at the higher cost.

All of the price increases are currently live on Apple’s website.

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Mobile Syrup

Apple Music is now available on Xbox

Apple Music has launched on Xbox consoles.

An app for the music streaming service can now be downloaded from the Xbox Store on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. Once downloaded, you can listen to music in the background, even when playing games.

This comes nearly one year after the Apple Music app launched on PlayStation 5. Spotify has been available on Xbox Series X/S and PS5 since the consoles launched in November 2020.

In Canada, Apple Music costs $9.99/month for an Individual membership and $14.99/month for a Family plan. The service is also included in Apple One subscription bundles, which start at $15.95/month and include services like Apple Arcade and Apple TV+.

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Mobile Syrup

Apple Music, TV and iCloud Photos integration coming soon to Windows

At its annual Surface event, Microsoft announced that Windows users will soon be able to download two native Apple TV and Apple Music applications on their Windows machines.

Until now, Windows users have had to use either the Apple TV web application to watch their favourite TV shows and movies, or the web app or iTunes app to access their music.

According to Microsoft, users will be able to download the two native apps directly from the Microsoft Store sometime in 2023, with Beta releases for both apps launching soon. Additionally, Apple Music is now available for Xbox users to access.

Further, an upcoming Windows 11 update will integrate iCloud photos directly into your Windows machine’s Photos app, allowing users to browse through their iPhone photos and videos directly on their Windows PC. Users on PC would need to download the iCloud app and log in with their credentials to sync the images and videos.

The Photos app update is rolling out now to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel, with a wider rollout scheduled for November.

 

Image credit: Microsoft

Source: Microsoft