American Airlines will be able to stream Apple Music over in-flight Wi-Fi for free

Apple Music is taking flight in more ways than one.
The company announced Tuesday a partnership with American Airlines that will allow Apple Music subscribers to stream songs, playlists and music videos on any domestic flight equipped with ViaSat satellite Wi-Fi for free. This makes American the first commercial airline to provide exclusive access to Apple Music through complimentary Wi-Fi.

 

"For most travelers, having music to listen to on the plane is just as important as anything they pack in their suitcases," said Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music in a press release. "With the addition of Apple Music on American flights, we are excited that customers can now enjoy their music in even more places."
Those who subscribe to Apple Music will be able to access the service on Apple devices equipped with the platform, including iPhones, iPads, Macs and Android phones. Those who don't have a subscription, however, could sign up for a free three-month trial once on board. The new deal begins Friday.
"Our guests want to make the most of their time when flying us. That's why we're investing in faster Wi-Fi, a variety of entertainment options, and why we're so excited to introduce Apple Music to more of our customers," said Janelle Anderson, vice president of global marketing at American, in the press release.
Apple Music's partnership with American comes months after integrating the service with the Amazon Echo. Earlier in January, Verizon announced its plans to include Apple Music subscriptions in some of its top-tier U.S. data plans.
Apple Music's subscriber count still lags behind Spotify's 87 million subscribers recorded last November. While Spotify has a free version of their service, Apple Music only has a three-month free trial.

 

During the company's most recent earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said iTunes reached its highest quarterly revenue thanks to Apple Music, which now has over 50 million paid subscribers. The app helped Apple's services revenue reach $10.9 billion in the December quarter, which is up 19 percent from the previous year.
"We not only generated our highest global services revenue ever, but we also had all-time records across multiple categories of services including the App Store, Apple Pay, cloud services and our App Store search ad business and we had a December quarter record for AppleCare," Cook said during the call.
Source from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/30/american-airlines-to-offer-free-apple-music-streaming-on-flights.html

Users will be able to Block Bands on Spotify

Go ahead and get the “Thank U, Next” joke out of your system. I’ll wait. Because that’s exactly what you’ll be doing with Spotify’s latest feature: telling various bands you can’t stand that you no longer want them to pop up on the curated playlists you otherwise enjoy.
And this isn’t just about annoying music. There are very legitimate reasons why you might have a moral objection to certain artists—known serial abusers, for example—and you’d rather they just go away for good. If you’re lucky, you might even be able to boot them out of your Spotify life right now.
As Thurrott reported yesterday, Spotify appears to be testing the new artist-blocking feature “with a smaller group of users.” I’m not running any alpha or betas of the Spotify app, but I noticed that I have the feature. You should check, too, as turning it on for any artist you dislike will ensure you don’t have to hear them on Spotify ever again. As Mehedi Hassan describes:

“This means it will block music from that artist on your personal library, playlists, automatically curated playlists, charts, radios, and everything else. In fact, you won’t be able to manually play music from an artist you’ve blocked even if you wanted to — and you’d have to unblock an artist before you can play a certain track from them. Blocking an artist doesn’t block tracks they have featured on, however.”

You would think that it would be easy to block an artist the minute one of their songs pops up, but the process is a bit more involved than that. When you tap on the triple-dot icon next to a song’s name in the Spotify app, the context menu doesn’t give you a way to block the artist outright.

Instead, you’ll have to scroll down a bit and tap on “View artist,” or just visit an artist’s Spotify page directly in the app. (Though I can access artist-blocking features on my iOS Spotify app, I didn’t see them on the web-based player or the Android app when I wrote this article.)
Once there, you’ll have to tap the same triple-dot icon in the upper-right corner of the app to access the contextual menu for the artist in question. If you have access to Spotify’s blocking feature, you’ll see a new option that reads, “Don’t play this artist.” Tap that, and you’ll be (almost entirely) free from them on Spotify—or, at least, until you have a change of heart (or become obsessed with a new single). If that happens, you’ll have to visit the artist’s page again to remove your block.
And it’s important to note that this “block” isn’t like to a Facebook block, where you’ll never see that which you block on the service. When I blocked Abba on Spotify, for example, they still appeared on Jonathan Van Ness’ (incredible) playlists. However, when I ran through the playlist, Spotify automatically skipped any and all Abba songs. (Sorry, Jonathan!)
There’s no word on when Spotify might roll this feature out to more users, so keep checking the app if you don’t have the blocking ability. You could also try enrolling in the service’s alpha or beta tests, if you want speedier access to whatever the company is working on.
Source from https://lifehacker.com/how-to-block-bands-on-spotify-1831951659

How to play iTunes Audiobooks on Kindle

When you transfer your Audiobooks from iTunes to Kindle, you find that you can't do this. All the purchased audiobooks from iTunes Store are by the name suffix ".m4b are protected with DRM. In other words, you can move these DRM audiobooks, unless you remove DRM limitations from these Audiobook files, and then you can easily and freely move the DRM-free audiobooks as you like.
In the following, we will show you the tips to decrypt DRM from iTunes Audiobooks and then play them on Kindle devices.
First of all, we need a DRM removal to help us deal with DRM Audiobooks from iTunes. Macsome iTunes Converter is the tool which you need.
To decrypt DRM from iTunes Audiobooks, users need to free download Macsome iTunes Converter at first.
Windows Version Download
Mac Version Download
Step 1, Double click to install the trial version of iTunes Converter on your PC, and then run it.

Step 2, click the Add button and select the audiobook files you want to convert from iTunes library.
After you choose the Audiobook files you would like to convert, click "OK", and then all the audiobook tracks files you selected would be listed on the main window.
Step 3, Set the output format by clicking the Setting icon, here we choose MP3 format. After iTunes Converter V3.0.0, the default conversion speed is super fast. There is no need to set the conversion speed.

Step 4, click the Convert button to start converting.
Step 5, transfer the Converted Audiobooks to Kindle Devices
Now connect your devices like Kindle Fire to your computer with the USB cable, then open the Kindle Fire folder on your computer, and then open the Internal storage folder, and then drag and drop the converted Audiobook files into the applicable folder.
All the process is very simple, even you are a new user, you can easily use the program to convert your audio files quickly. Why not free download it and take a try.

How to get free trial Apple Music longer than 3 months

Everyone knows that if you want to play Apple Music songs, you need to subscribe Apple Music service. How to play Apple Music freely?
If you are a new user for Apple Music service, visit Apple's website, and choose "Free Trial" in the top right corner, or click "Try it free for three months" on the relevant plan, and you'll be able to get three months absolutely free of charge.
If you want to to get an extra three months of Apple Music, the family plan will be a choice.
If you're happy to use Family Sharing, you could get another member of your family to sign up for the free trial of the Apple Music Family Sharing plan, and then share that with you. You’ll then be able to take advantage of an extra three months for free.
Following the above methods, you have 6 months or more free trial date, but this is troublesome. Not everyone like to try this, in the following, we will show how to keep these Apple Music songs forever after your 3-months free trial.
You know, Apple doesn't offer a free version of Apple Music. After you cancel the Apple Music subscription, all the songs even you have downloaded on your computer can't work and be playable any longer, not to say that, you'll no longer be able to search through the streaming catalog or play custom playlists, because of DRM.
DRM protections limits users to get more freedom from Apple Music. Have you thought of removing DRM from Apple Music songs and then you get unprotected Apple Music songs and play them without limitation and backup them as you like.
Macsome iTunes Converter is the tool to help users get more freedom from Apple Music songs. What you only need to do, just download the favorite Apple Music songs during your 3-month free trial time, and convert them to unprotected AAC, MP3, FLAC and WAV audio formats, and then you can play or keep them according to your need.

Online guide to remove DRM from Apple Music and play them freely

Follow the next step-by-step guide to delete your Apple Music files' DRM
Step 1, Go to download the latest version of iTunes Music Converter by clicking the next download button according to your system, and then install and run it.
In the next, all the conversion are working with Macsome iTunes Converter for Mac.
Windows Version Download
Mac Version Download
Step 2. Just click "+" to import the downloaded Apple Music files.
Please make sure that you have downloaded the Apple Music files you want to convert and they can work normally on your iTunes.

Step 3. Click the setting icon to set the output format and output folder.

There are four output formats including MP3, AAC, FLAC and WAV for users to choose. If necessary, you can also reset the related audio parameters.
Step 4. Click the "CONVERT" button to start your iTunes music converting.

After the conversion, all the Apple Music files' DRM have been removed. You can keep these music or transfter them to PSP, iRiver, Spotify, Pandora and so on.
More Apple Music Tips:

• How to move Apple Music to Google Play Music
• Tips to use Kindle to play iTunes Audiobooks
• How to rip Apple Music to AAC losslessly
• How to sync Apple Music to Samsung Galaxy S8
• How to get DRM-free Version of Apple Music