Apple’s standalone ‘Apple Music Classical’ app is now available on the App Store just weeks after the company teased its launch.

Apple Music subscribers are able to download and use the new app at no additional cost as part of their existing subscription.

The app is now available worldwide where Apple Music is offered, excluding China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan and Turkey, while available features and content may vary by country or region, according to the Apple Music Classical page on the App Store.

It requires an Apple Music subscription, but is not available with the Apple Music Voice Plan, a subscription tier for Apple Music that is designed to work with Siri.

US music rights management company BMI has clinched victory in a rate court dispute against live events promoters Live Nation, AEG, and the North American Concert Promoters Association (NACPA).

The win will see songwriters get a 138% increase in rates to 0.5% of every event’s revenue.

Live Nation downplayed the impact of the ruling on concert promoters, saying this will instead cost performers about $15 million a year, divided among thousands of artists

Warner says that Garvey has “a stellar track record at major labels in senior executive positions”.

The exec’s career includes five years as SVP of Commercial Channels and Consumer Marketing at Warner Music International and, before that, VP of Digital at EMI.

She joins WMUK from Abbey Road Studios, where she was appointed Managing Director in 2014.

During her tenure at Abbey Road, according to Wednesday’s (March 29) announcement, “she drove the world-famous studio into the future by expanding both the studio footprint and the brand, launching digital production services and establishing Europe’s first incubator for music tech innovation, amongst many other achievements”.

YouTube recently revealed that as of December, its TikTok rival Shorts was averaging over 50 billion daily views and that in 2022, the number of channels uploading content to the Shorts platform daily grew over 80%. 

On Thursday (March 30), YouTube’s Global Head of Music Lyor Cohen revealed, via a blog post, a new set of stats that hone in on music’s performance on the platform.

The headline stat, according to YouTube, is that in January 2023, the top 1,000 songs on Shorts saw more than 280 billion combined views.

Also in January, fan-created Shorts reportedly increased the average artist’s audience of unique viewers by more than 80%.

Spotify’s France-based rival Deezer has teamed up with US speaker maker Sonos to power the latter’s streaming radio service Sonos Radio and its subscription service Sonos Radio HD globally.

The partnership will see Deezer deliver its catalog of 90 million tracks, metadata, licensing, reporting and royalty management, business intelligence and data to Sonos users, starting in April.

Deezer says it will also provide key services for Sonos Radio and Sonos Radio HD, as well as strategic collaboration for growth and monetization of the service, according to a press release.

The new alliance will deliver services to 16 countries including the US, Canada, the UK, France and Germany.

In addition, both companies will also explore opportunities to expand “the Sonos music experience,” and collaborate on new ways to help listeners discover music and soundtrack.

In March last year, Epic Games, maker of hit video game Fortnite and Unreal Engine acquired online music store and direct-to-fan platform Bandcamp.

In a statement published by Epic at the time, the company said that Bandcamp will play an “important role” in its “vision to build out a creator marketplace ecosystem for content, technology, games, art, music and more”.

Since then, Epic Games has been fairly quiet about its plans for Bandcamp, but on Friday (February 17), its flagship game Fortnite revealed that the music platform is curating its ‘Radio Underground’ radio station until Wednesday, March 8, 2023 (for the rest of its Battle Royale Chapter 4 Season 1).

The curated station includes music from 11 acts, including New Zealand rock band The Beths, Californian noise pop band Starflyer 59, and pop punk band Gladie.

It also includes, amongst many others, ‘Post disco’ duo De Lux, producer Ronnie Martin, and New York disco, rock and soul act, POW WOW!