Apple has a very special surprise for users of Apple Music for Android

4 Feb 2016

With the latest update to Apple Music, Android users can store music on SD cards which in theory means an Android smartphone user can store more downloaded songs than an iPhone user

Apple has just released an update for Apple Music for Android that lets users store their downloaded songs on microSD cards.

This means Android users don’t have to worry about running out of storage space on their devices or worry about exceeding their data plans.

Apple is on something of a roll with Apple Music, having notched up 10m users in just six months, a milestone that took rival Spotify six years to achieve.

The $10-a-month service lets users access a library of millions of songs, as well as Beats 1 global radio.

Pulling off a similar master stroke to when it opened up iTunes to PC users as well as Mac owners back in 2001, opening up Apple Music to Android users effectively opens the streaming platform to more than 80pc of smartphone owners worldwide.

The Apple Music beta for Android also lets users see the full schedule for Beats 1 programming.

Users can also browse My Music by Composers and Compilations, which gives users access to classical music and movie soundtracks.

The addition of support for SD cards is a brave move by Apple as it means Android smartphone or tablet users could potentially store more music offline than any iPhone or iPad can store. For example, the highest spec iPhone 6 can store a maximum of 128GB.

SD cards image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com