A bunch of music producers, including the band Beetle Juice, have launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring a free music streaming service to Apple Music.
It sounds a bit like a mashup of Spotify and Pandora, but it’s not.
In fact, it’s very different from them all, as Apple Music will not be launching its own music service at launch.
Instead, it’ll be using the existing Apple Music app to serve up music from local artists and services, as well as curated collections from music labels, independent artists, and more.
The service will offer access to a handful of music streaming services that are already available to Apple users, such as Rdio, Deezer, and Apple Music Premium.
These services will be available to those who have signed up for an Apple Music subscription through a separate, separate app called Apple Music for Education, and they’ll be offered for a limited time.
You’ll have to pay $9.99 a month for access to the full service, which includes access to over 20,000 tracks, as opposed to $19.99 for an individual Apple Music account.
While the service will be free to Apple Pay users, the service’s subscription pricing includes a $4.99 monthly fee for the first year.
The new service is currently listed on Kickstarter with a goal of $40,000.
The creators of the new music streaming app are offering their own $50 million funding campaign to help get the service rolling.
Apple Music already has a huge amount of data about the tastes of its users, and it seems that the company is hoping that it can improve on that by making it easier to find artists and music, and by allowing for personalized recommendations based on how many listeners a song has.
As Recode’s Kara Swisher points out, this new service may help Apple users find more of the music they want, and perhaps even help Apple pay artists more, because it will provide more options for artists and labels.
It’s not the first time Apple has tried to expand the music listening experience, with the company launching Beats Music in 2012, and the Beats Music app now includes a section called Beats Music for Families, where parents can find music tailored to their kids.
If you’ve been on the fence about Apple Music, be sure to give it a look.
The company’s next product may be called Apple’s App Store, and if it ever does launch, it will have to compete against Spotify, Rdio and others.
