Apple Music will be available on all iOS devices by the end of the month.
Apple Music will be available on all iOS devices by the end of the month.

Apple CEO Tim Cook made music journalists sit through two hours of techie talk before he finally brought music mogul Jimmy Iovine on stage to usher in the announcement that we all knew was coming. (Incidentally, shout to Beyoncé for making everyone get up early this morning just to find out she's a freaking vegan now. Girl, we already knew.) That's right. We've now got some insight into what the new service, Apple Music, will look like, and Spotify is shivering in its little Swedish boots.

Here's the major takeaways. Apple Music will be available on all iOS devices on June 30. There's a free three-month trial once you sign up, after which it will cost you $9.99 per month. Unless you'd prefer to sign up for the special family membership, which will run you and 5 of your relatives only $14.99 a month total. Every single song in the iTunes catalog will be available for streaming, in addition to all the usual promises about new suggestions and discoveries.

Iovine began with hyperbolic statements about revolutionizing the music industry that made Jack White sound understated, they played a Trent Reznor-narrated video, and we were introduced to Beats 1—a radio station that will broadcast to more than 100 countries from New York, London, and LA, hosted by Ebro Darden, Zane Lowe, and Judy Adenuga respectively.

Then, as promised, Drake showed up onstage to talk about the new Connect feature, which will allow artists to upload content from their social media platforms directly to Apple Music. He kept mentioning Views from the 6, so there's sure to be some kind of secret Apple project crossover in the works. (Since Chance the Rapper and the Social Experiment also released Surf for free via iTunes—which Chance recently claimed has been downloaded 618,000 times—I would anticipate some kind of collaboration there as well in the near future. You heard it here first.)

The Weeknd also premiered a new single, "Can't Feel My Face," which we all heard when it leaked last week.

If you look at the Apple Live site, you'll also notice the statement "Unsigned artists can share their music on Apple Music, too. So music lovers and the entire music industry can hear it." I'm interested in hearing more about this aspect and how exactly that will work in terms of monetary value. If an unsigned artist finds a label as a result of uploading their song to Apple Music, will Apple be collecting some of the revenue? There are some financial implications at work here that need to be unpacked.

But anyway, it's probably time to cancel that Spotify Premium membership and have Tim Cook teach Jay Z a thing or two about running a press conference. (Cook has clearly learned from his U2 mistakes.) But I guess there's no need to be discussing TIDAL at all now, unless you want to talk about how Nicki Minaj and Rihanna are going to get themselves out of that one.

Beyoncé's pretty locked in, but it's cool 'cause she's vegan now. (Ahem.)

Sure looks like shes feelin that hamburger.
Sure looks like she's feelin' that hamburger. https://youtu.be/iAW7-HyxoyE