It’s looking more and more like Apple is going to use WWDC 2015 to reestablish its dominance over the music industry. 9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman has a big new report outlining Apple’s big music-related announcements for this year’s big developers conference that will include not just the relaunch of Beats Music to take on Spotify but a revamp of the oft-maligned iTunes Radio to take on Pandora.
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Gurman’s sources claim that the new Beats Music service will roll out “a few weeks after” it’s unveiled at WWDC in June and via the final versions of iOS 8.4 and iTunes 12.2. The first two betas of iOS 8.4 have mostly been to help Apple test out the new music service’s functionality.
When it comes to iTunes Radio, Apple will also allow users to skip an unlimited number of songs on the new service, but only as part of the paid bundle.
While Apple had hoped iTunes Radio would be a worthy Pandora rival when it came out a couple of years ago, it’s so far proven to be better at frustrating its users than delivering good song recommendations. With both Pandora and Spotify raking in money, however, Apple has decided to move more aggressively against the two big music apps both through revamping iTunes Radio and relaunching Beats Music. Whether Apple’s moves will actually help it regain its hold on the music industry is still very much an open question.
