Apple muscles into streaming music market

San Francisco (Reuters): Apple launched Apple Music on Monday, a $ 9.99-a-month streaming music service that may not differ dramatically from competitors but comes with Apple’s deep music roots, global brand and hundreds of millions of iTunes customers.

Apple Music will be available in more than 100 countries, and it will be accessible on iOS, Mac OS and Windows right away, as well as via a new Android app as well as an app on Apple TV later this fall.

Apple’s push into the streaming business will likely alter the dynamics of how consumers listen to music as the music industry grapples with declines in downloaded songs and tries to figure out new ways to get people to pay for music.

The unveiling of the service, the kick-off to the week-long Worldwide Developers Conference, also included the announcement of an upgraded operating system for Apple’s watch that will let developers create speedier “native” apps that rely less on the iPhone. Apple said that “El Capitan” will be the name of the next version of OS X for its Macs.

It disclosed that the next version of the software that powers iPhones and iPads, called iOS 9, will come out this fall and detailed the continued expansion of Apple Pay, which will launch in the United Kingdom next month.