Apple’s answer to music streaming debuts today, as the global tech company attempts to leverage its entertainment clout in the booming on-demand music business.

“We are profoundly passionate about music,” the company declared on its website, so we’ve set out to make it better.”

Apple Music will combine on-demand access to the 30 million songs in the iTunes music library with a live, global Internet radio broadcast and a music-themed social network.

Its revamped Beats 1 global radio broadcast, available for free, will headline a ‘curated’ lineup of Internet radio stations available in 100 countries, Apple said.

The 24-hour programme broadcast live from New York, London and Los Angeles will feature influential British DJ Zane Lowe, formerly of the BBC’s Radio One.

Apple is billing its subscription-only Connect social media network as a kind of virtual backstage pass, where artistes post personal reflections and work-in-progress, and fans can interact with them directly.

Apple is going up against established streaming rivals including Spotify and Pandora, cribbing from their most popular features to create its first new music service since iTunes in 2001.

Market leader Spotify boasts a library of more than 30 million songs, with 20 million paying subscribers for its on-demand streaming service in 58 countries.

More than 79 million people per month tuned into Pandora’s ‘personalised’ Internet radio, according to the company’s April 2015 financial returns.

But the world’s most valuable company is betting its high profile and entertainment-world credentials will help Apple Music stand out from the crowd.

Swift’s one-day spat over royalties

The service got an early visibility boost on June 21 when pop singer-songwriter Taylor Swift scolded, then forgave its executives in a one-day spat over royalties.

After Apple agreed to pay artists during a three-month free trial period, Swift said she would allow Apple Music to stream her hit album 1989.

Swift withheld 1989 from Spotify in a similar, still unresolved dispute.

Apple Music scored exclusive streaming rights to Pharrell Williams’ new single Freedom and rapper Dr Dre’s classic album, The Chronic.

Dr Dre has worked for Apple since its 2014 acquisition of the music impresario’s Beats Music.

Apple Music will pay artists between 71.5 and 73 percent of revenue from streaming. Spotify pays 70 percent, according to MacRumors.com.

Apple Music subscribers will pay US$10 per month of access after a three-month free trial.

The more than 800 million Apple iOS users worldwide will get first crack at the new service, through a free operating system update available today.

- dpa