[mortenjorck]

I'm not where it fits into the timeline, but Apple has actually offered a rather obscure and limited way to use Apple Music in a browser for some time prior to the launch of the full web client.

There's no way to browse, or even launch it directly. You have to search, via Google or other, for an album, and follow the link to what always used to be the iTunes Preview page. You can still listen to the thirty-second previews on this page, but there's a sign-in link in the header that will, quite surprisingly, unlock full playback of the album without launching iTunes.

It's hardly the full Apple Music experience – all you get is the album you found and some related links at the bottom, with no access to your library or playlists – but it does work. I'm not really sure what purpose this functionality served, other than perhaps as a testbed for the actual web client, but it's still active for the time being.

[grenoire]

This is used for sites such as Genius (lyrics aggregator/social commentary mix, still uses Apple Music I believe) to provide a snippet to browsers without a subscription.