$120 for what?
No word on:
Streaming Quality
iTunes Match compatibility
Skipping Songs
Offline listening
Personal Playlists
Select What I Want When I Want
Beats Radio is just mystifying?!
Every Internet Radio station is Global and highly curated!!!
I regularly listen to BBC Radio 1 for Pete Tong Essential Mix
along with Intergalatic FM from Netherlands
KFAT from California (it's off the air, just replays old broadcast from the 70s/80s)
The above are all FREE, besides the (data) I pay for while listening in my car.
Spotify still wins at the moment.
$120 a year for access to a library of tens of millions of tracks, to listen to whenever and wherever you want. Details aside, that's the jist.
Streaming quality - I assume (and it seems to have been confirmed above) that it will be the same 256.
iTunes Match - not sure what the deal is with that. But unless I'm missing something, iTunes Match gives you access to everything in your library at 256, even if its some crappy old download from Napster back in the day. Essentially a music amnesty. If Apple Music gives you access to (pretty much) everything their library, what you have in your library available via iTunes Match is presumably moot.
Skipping songs - I would assume you can slip songs just as you can in Spotify. I think streaming services have gotten past having those sorts of restrictions. I am to sure if it has been confirmed anywhere, but I'd be surprised it it did have skipping limitations. A. because that would be a deal breaker for a lot of people. And B. because the record companies have already come round to that with the likes of Spotify, so there's no reason for it to be an issue with Apple Music.
Offline listening - think this has been confirmed as possible. Same reasoning as for skipping songs would apply.
Other internet radio stations tend to be playlists that are pre-programmed to play out, often without DJs, and largely curated by algorithm. Beats will be a proper radio station, just like Radio 1, with programmes broadcast live, with actual DJs.
All else being equal (and no reason for it not to be), I think Apple Music wins simply because of the proper live radio station. And if a big part of connect works along the same lines as BBC Introducing, I think that's another win over Spotify. (Seeing as they headhunted BBC Introducing people from the BBC as well as Zane, that indicates that that's what they have in mind.)
Radio 1 gets a lot of unfair flack - usually from Daily Mail readers who would never listen to it, but the evening schedules are probably as good and diverse as you're going to get from a single broadcast radio station. And seeing as Apple did quite a bit of headhunting from there seems like a good sign of the direction they want to go in.