iFruit Music Service

Apple’s streaming music service, which will be a totally overhauled version of Beats but with iTunes branding and tighter integration with Apple’s own devices and software, will make its official debut in June, likely at WWDC. A source with knowledge of the company’s current plans tells TechCrunch June 8 is the target launch date, at least for an official unveiling. 9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman has reported that it will premiere at Apple’s annual developer conference event, which many suspect will fall between June 8 and June 12 this year, though no official dates have yet been set.

Apple’s streaming music offering aims to bring in some of the Beats-style personalization and recommendation features of that current streaming service but will likely be mostly new on the software side, and without Beats branding, as we first reported back in September. Apple still apparently plans to offer the service across platforms, however, including on the web and on Android, 9to5Mac reports, and development on the Android side of things is one of the reasons it’s launching in June and not this March as earlier reports maintained.

A cross-platform offering makes a lot of sense for Apple for a few reasons: First, with music it has a long history of reaching out to competing platforms, starting with iTunes for Windows. Also, it recently made iWork available to all users regardless of hardware preference via iCloud on the web. Services are still essentially a part of Apple’s business that it uses to generate more hardware sales, and things like a streaming music offering or cloud-based productivity software are services it can use to reach out to customers beyond its ecosystem, especially if there are additional benefits to be gained in the form of exclusive add-on functionality when those services are used with Apple devices.