The Apple Beat: An Overview of Apple Music

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

What a lot of people tend to overlook is that because of iTunes, Apple is actually the number one music retailer in the world. The service celebrated selling 25 billion songs back in 2013, and it took over a decade to build that business which now is expanding to Apple Music.

Apple’s big announcement at this year’s World Wide Developer’s Conference was its new music service aptly titled Apple Music. 

The company that invented iTunes as well as revolutionized buying songs and albums digitally and which really started the iPod revolution a decade ago, had to react to the sudden shift of users buying music to using streaming services like Pandora (not in Canada), Spotify, RDIO, Google Play Music and various others. Here's what you need to know about Apple Music.

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Netflix website getting a major visual overhaul for US and Canada

If you access your Netflix subscription from your browser, expect to see some changes and improvements comign to the straming subscription service. This is the biggest change to the Netflix wesbite in four years. "It’s an experience that has been built from the ground up to make it faster and easier to discover something great to watch for our millions of members around the world," Netflx explains.

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HotelTonight's Escape feature innovates discovery travel

HotelTonight is the leading app and service for finding and booking places to stay at a short notice. The company just released Escape which they say is, "an innovation is the best new way to discover driving-distance getaways for the weekend ahead or for that very night."

Think a quick departure from Toronto to a quaint hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake  or Vancouver to Whistler for a weekend getaway. It’s combining the amazing offers we know and love from HotelTonight with a curated list of destinations based on your GPS, current events and the season in question.

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eBay revises iOS app to work with Apple Watch

While official Apple Watch sales numbers have not been released, smart businesses are quickly tweaking their iOS apps to work with Apple's wearable and while native Apple Watch apps are a few months away (watchOS was just released this week), there are benefits to enabling Watch interaction for popular existing apps.

eBay's app update offers quick access to activity, items you're watching as well as up to the minute status of things you're buying or selling. You can't use the Watch to search for items, place a bid or contact sellers since the interface and screen size isn't optimized for this but being able to get an update of your current status at a glance on the Watch may prove convenient to serious eBay users. Check it out here.