Apple’s annual Music Festival comes to an end after 10 years

The Apple Music Festival has met its end. Apple told Music Business Worldwide that it won’t be doing its annual London concert series anymore. What first started out as the iTunes Festival, it was the company’s way of trying to get more people to buy album on its service. Streaming music services or any streaming service was still in its infancy when Apple started doing this. And they’ve had some of the biggest stars perform throughout the years including the likes of Adele, Pharrell Williams, The Weeknd, One Direction, Lady Gaga, Oasis, Ed Sheeran, Alicia Keys, etc.

But it looks like the advent of music streaming services, Apple is rethinking its strategy in the music space. They need people to keep subscribing to its Apple Music service and while a yearly festival might attract attention, it’s not enough to sustain listeners. Lately, the company has started to support individual shows like those of Haim, DJ Khaled, and Arcade Fire. They even sponsored Drake’s 32-date Summer Sixteen Tour in 2016. Apple has also gotten into episodic streaming video with Carpool Karaoke to keep listeners and viewers coming back.

Carpool Karaoke: The Series features the Stark Sisters from GOT

In an attempt to stay topical and hip, Carpool Karaoke featured actresses Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner (Arya and Sansa Stark from the hugely successful Game of Thrones show on HBO). While the two actresses aren't singers, which makes their inclusion something of a departure from the format, they do offer some humourous moments, including speaking like Ned Stark. Check out the teaser video above.

You can now use PayPal with Apple services

PayPal just announced that its payment service is now coming to Apple’s major services. You can now use it for the App Store, Apple Music, iTunes, and iBooks on both iOS and Mac devices. It’s available in Canada, the US, the UK, Mexico, Australia, Austria, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. Setting it up is similar to how you would a credit card. PayPal now shows up as a payment option. So when you select that, any purchases you made on that Apple ID will be charged to your PayPal account.

Jay-Z’s ‘4:44’ album makes its way to most streaming services

After a week of Jay-Z’s 4:44 being a Tidal and Sprint exclusive, the new album comes to most major streaming services. We say most as Spotify is missing from the list of services it’s available in. We’re not surprised as the hip-hop mogul pulled his catalog from the service a few months ago. He seems to be in better terms with Apple as 4:44 is available on both iTunes and Apple Music. The album is also available on Google Play Music and Amazon Music. Some of the services even have “The Story of O.J.” animated video.

Source: Engadget