Apple Music reportedly stopped offering free three-month trial in three countries

If you want to try out Apple Music for the first time, you still get a free three-month trial here. Unfortunately, for those in Australia, Spain, and Switzerland, that’s been taken away. Instead of the first three months being free, Apple is charging $0.99 in Australia, 0.99 € in Spain, and Fr. 0.99 in Switzerland. The tech company hasn’t commented yet on this changes but 9to5Mac speculates the move is most likely fueled by competition. Music streaming service Spotify charges the same small fee for three months in the same countries. It’s unclear if Apple Music plans to introduce this scheme to other countries. But if ever they will, we should hear about it at WWDC next week.

Musical.ly users now get access to songs on Apple Music

A new partnership between Apple and Musical.ly is set to bring more tunes to the creation tool/social network. Musical.ly is an app that lets you create and share your own 15-second music video using parts of songs and various video and visual effects. Now, you can select songs from Apple Music’s library to play with. At the same time, Musical.ly will let you listen to full songs from Apple Music within the Musical.ly app and create playlists from there. The deal helps out Apple in the sense that it has also been trying to boost the visibility of video in its own Apple Music ecosystem. Musical.ly is available for download on iTunes, Amazon app stores, and Google Play.

🚨🚨 Did you know?? We’ve teamed up with @musicallyapp to bring you full versions of your favorite songs without having to leave the app! pic.twitter.com/3eC21V6cme

— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) April 28, 2017

Source: Engadget

‘Carpool Karaoke’ series launch gets delayed to ‘later this year’

Apple’s first original TV series, Carpool Karaoke: The Series, was supposed to come out this month. But it looks like that isn’t happening. The series’ debut is pushed back to “later this year.” A premiere party for the shows was supposed to happen last month but that got postponed. It was pushed to Monday but got pushed back again because of the delay of the show’s launch. Apple won’t say what’s been causing the delays.

Carpool Karaoke: The Series stars the likes of James Corden, Will Smith, Alicia Keys, Seth MacFarlane, Chelsea Handler, Blake Shelton, John Cena, to name a few. Taken from the “Carpool Karaoke” segment from The Late Late Show with James Corden, the new show will have 16 half-hour episodes and will “surprise fans” as they see “big stars belting out tunes one lane over.” When it premieres, the show will be exclusively available on Apple Music.

Source: MacRumors

Jay Z pulls music catalog from Apple Music and Spotify

Joella Marano/Wikimedia

Seems like an odd move at this time but Jay Z has pulled out all his solo work from Spotify and Apple Music. Tidal, the streaming service that the hip-hop star owns, will be the only place you’ll get to stream all his music. According to Spotify, his catalog was pulled “at the request of the artist.” This isn’t the first time he’s taken away his songs. When Tidal launched, he took out is debut album, Reasonable Doubt, from all streaming services. His Blueprint series has been removed as well. The only other service that has most of his catalog (except for Reasonable Doubt and Blueprint) is Google Play Music.

Source: The Verge