Meet Apple's New Streaming Music And Radio Service, Apple Music

Apple Music lets you stream songs, access curated playlists, and tune into a 24 hour, live worldwide radio station.

Apple is gunning hard for the music streaming industry, taking aim at companies like Spotify, Tidal, and Pandora all at once with its own streaming music service.

At its Worldwide Developer's Conference on Monday, the computing giant announced the debut of Apple Music. It will be available June 30 for $9.99 per month. There will also be a family plan for up to six family members available for $14.99 per month.

The new update will make personal iTunes music libraries, internet radio — called Beats One — and streaming all available in a new, revamped music app. Apple also announced it will release the service on Android, as well as its own iOS.

This is the biggest change to Apple's approach to music since the iTunes Store launched more than a decade ago, but it is not the company's first forays into curation and streaming. Ping, which launched in 2010 and lasted just two years, was a social network for iTunes that had some of the same hallmarks — such as artist-curated playlists — as the new service. iTunes Radio, which debuted in 2013, is a Pandora-like service that, despite the proliferation of iTunes, has failed to impact the online radio market.

The streaming service, and its focus on human curation, were hallmarks of Beats Music — the streaming app Apple acquired in 2014 when it purchased Beats Electronic for $3 billion.

Connect is a social network for artists to connect with their listeners with multimedia content and updates. The feature was introduced by rapper Drake. "I can't wait to incorporate Apple Music into what I'm doing next," he said, going on to sell it as a path to success similar to his — Drake initially broke on Myspace, where Lil Wayne heard his music and signed him to a record deal.

Apple is late to streaming. With more than 80 million active users, Pandora is already a formidable player, and Spotify — with 60 million users, 15 million of whom pay for a subscription — has already become synonymous with on-demand streaming since its debut in 2008. Both will be tough to beat.

That said, according to the RIAA, only 7.7 million U.S. consumers paid for online streaming last year. When compared to other media streaming companies like Netflix, which has more than 40 million paid subscribers, the music streaming field has plenty of room for growth. Thanks to its enormous base of customers — Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones in just the first quarter of 2015 — it is certainly capable of taking on the existing players.