Apple Will Live Stream Its Newly Rebranded Apple Music Festival On Beats 1

Dr. Dre’s new album premiered on Apple Music, as you might expect, and now Apple is leveraging its annual live music festival to promote its music streaming service.

The company just announced that the Apple Music Festival — formerly know as the iTunes Festival — will be broadcast live on Beats 1, the live-radio station that accompanies the Apple Music service.

The announcement isn’t a surprise, nor is the renaming of the festival. It makes absolute sense that Apple is using all its services and media reach to promote Apple Music to as many potential listeners and customers as possible. The service has attracted over 11 million users during the initial free trial period, which lasts three months. While Apple Music is priced differently across the world (it is as cheap as $2 per month India) and due to land on Android soon, it remains to be seen how it will fare once the trial period is over — particularly since the likes of Spotify offer a free, ad-supported tier which Apple’s service doesn’t.

Back to the news in hand. The Apple Music Festival takes place every evening at the Roundhouse in London between September 19 and September 28. Pharrell Williams, One Direction, Florence + The Machine and Disclosure are among the initial acts that have been confirmed for this year. In addition to the music, Apple said it will also broadcast “backstage news and footage straight from the artists” via Apple Music Connect.

“We wanted to do something really special for music fans this year,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, said in a statement.