Apple’s new music site enters public beta

Apple has been teasing it for a while now, but it looks we’ll soon see the end of iTunes. While Apple changed the world with its revolutionary music store that almost single-handedly destroyed the CD and the way the industry tracked sales, the biggest problem with it was that in order to use the store and download the music you required additional software called iTunes. Revolutionary for its time, possibly, but something that has since aged horribly, is slow and cumbersome to use and worse – has since become a central hub for all things Apple.

Apple is preparing to remove the need to download this terrible piece of software just to use its music site and has now made its new music site available for public beta at beta.music.apple.com. The site offers access to the entire Apple Music catalogue as well as any tracks users have synced to their libraries that aren’t on Apple Music. Playlists — including Apple’s personalized “For You” recommendations — and Apple Music’s radio stations will be available as part of the beta, too. It does however currently not allow new people to sign up to the service with that feature expected to come a little later.

There are a few other features missing such as Beta1 live broadcasts and smart playlists, but Apple will eventually get the new site to parity with the existing software. The beauty of the move the web though means that Apple can now offer its store to people who use Chrome OS or Linux and no longer needs to be concerned about trying to maintain or update its old legacy iTunes software anymore. Something which I’m sure many subscribers will be thankful for.  

There is no official roadmap just yet from Apple on exactly when it intends to add new features or how long it plans to stay in Beta, but if you have ever used their iTunes software before, you would probably be happy that you soon no longer will need to ever again.

Last Updated: September 9, 2019