Tuesday morning, about four months after Apple Music debuted on Apple’s iOS and OS X platforms, the service appeared on another: Google’s Android.
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That’s in the short term, at least.
If you’ve used Apple Music before – or own any music on iTunes – you can supposedly get access to your library if you enter the same Apple ID in the Android app, although this didn’t seem to happen when I tried it. This is the reason Apple Music will be available on Android and plans to garner similar responses from users.
Android users who are new to Apple Music will get a three-month free trial just like on iOS, and an additional bonus is the fact that the app will bring across their iTunes files to their Android device too.
That’s one of the findings from a Pew Research study that analyzed more than 1 million apps in the Google Play store.
This is not a major issue for most users since it is primarily a music streaming application and in subsequent updates we do hope to see all such features on Android as well.
The Apple Music app for Android features all the bells and whistles you’d expect from the service on iOS, but Apple has designed the app in such a way that it blends in well with the overall aesthetics of Android itself. “It’ll definitely feel very much like an Android app”, said Cue.
It’s biggest rival, Spotify, in many ways has a more innovative app, which it has had time to polish and develop – attracting over 70 million users in the process (with around 20 million of those paying).
However, the Android version of Apple Music is expected to be simpler and less-cluttered.
Techcrunch also notes that in a recent earnings call Apple CEO Tim Cook said that 30% of new iPhone users were switching from Android devices. Getting a family subscription for $14.99 that will allow six people to share a subscription will only be possible using an iOS device or a Mac.
The app has launched in every country where it has Apple Music, apart from China.
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This is the first proper Apple app to land on Android that offers up content, with the other being Move to iOS.
