Apple Music: A Glorious Revolution?

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]t about ten to eight on the night of Monday 8th, Jimmy Iovine, Apple’s new music executive, in his own words “revolutionised” music and how we experience it by announcing Apple’s new streaming service. He proclaimed that their mission was to rectify the fragmentation of our musical experience by reducing the number of services needed for fans to experience music. Trent Reznor of Nine-Inch Nails, now an “Apple Creative”, told us that this new platform would treat music like it should be treated: like art. In fact, drawing parallels between the art of music and the art of Apple’s technology was a running theme of the presentation. After Iovine and Reznor, Drake came out professing his love for Apple Music, looking like a bloody hack in a vintage Apple jacket. Then, to finish things off, Abel Tesfaye (aka The Weeknd) came out and gave the crowd his very best impression of a damp squib. Thus Apple Music was announced. But what is Apple Music?

Apple Music will be comprised of four main components: music streaming, curated playlists, a 24/7 global radio station called Beats 1 and a social media platform called Connect. As far as the streaming is concerned, Apple already have deals in place with the large record labels for downloading music from iTunes and they will no doubt attempt to tweak those deals to include streaming as well. But Apple, along with major record labels such as Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music, have already been accused of collusion by the Attorney Generals of New York and Connecticut. The Attorney Generals are investigating whether Apple coerced the record labels or whether they schemed together to withdraw popular support for “freemium” streaming services such as Spotify. Now that a viable alternative to the free services has been created it will be difficult to stop the record labels selling rights to their music exclusively to the providers without a free-to-listen tier, in order to claw back some of the money they have been losing from streaming in the past two or three years.

Apple’s underlying message is that because Apple are the only ones capable of transforming technology into art, they are the only ones worthy of stewarding the art of music correctly.

Apple Music will be offering playlists “curated” by music “experts”. Throughout the presentation the words “art” and “curated” were used repeatedly, which is a testament to Apple’s underlying message: because Apple are the only ones capable of transforming technology into art, they are the only ones worthy of stewarding the art of music correctly. Apple’s playlists will be compiled by humans and not computer algorithms like spotify’s. Siri will also be recommending new songs and artists for you, but again Spotify already offers a similar service (minus the robot’s voice) and it’s questionable how good the recommendations are.

The launch of the round-the-clock global radio station, Beats 1, playing live from London, New York and Los Angeles, is a further attempt to gain control of all the scenarios where a person might listen to music. Apple have, to their credit, poached two presenters of a high calibre in Ebro Darden, of WQHT Hot 97, for their New York station and Julie Adenuga (sister of JME and Skepta), of Rinse FM, for the London station… and then Zane Lowe in L.A. The station will feature exclusive music, interviews and guest hosts as well as the latest in music news and culture. If any of this sounds familiar to you, then you’ve probably once in your life listened to BBC Radio 1. That they poached Zane Lowe is indicative of the fact that the main thing lacking throughout Apple Music is imagination. BBC Radio 1 and stations like it have been trailblazers for the future of radio and Beats 1 will have a really difficult time distinguishing itself in the space that those stations created.

Drake

The final aspect of the platform is a social media component called Connect. Artists will be able to “post their latest tracks, behind-the-scenes photos, in-progress lyrics, or remixes”. Through this feature unsigned artists will also be share their music. Drake took to the stage to extol the virtues of Connect and in customarily emotional fashion said that it will give artists “the opportunity to express themselves to fans on the deepest level, building relationships that last a lifetime.” He then left the stage counting his thirty pieces of silver. Realistically speaking, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat have social media interaction between fans pretty sewn-up and it will be surprising to see this feature get any meaningful use. Similar to the other features, Connect brings nothing new to the table; Apple have just collected and re-packaged existing services.The lack of imagination throughout is jarring, but it does collect all of disparate strands of music consumption and brings them together in one place, so at least it will be convenient!

When comparing Apple Music to its competitors, namely Spotify, Tidal, BBC Radio 1 and social media sites, the thing that is striking is how much more Apple Music will do. They will offer more than any one of their competitors, but it certainly won’t be that different from any of them. In terms of pricing, it will be much the same as Spotify at $9.99 a month but they are offering the first three months for free, presumably in the hope that after three months people forget to cancel and Apple will charge without any warning à la Spotify. But unlike the current market leader, Apple Music will offer no free or ad-supported tier. It is half the price of Tidal per month, but it doesn’t nearly match it on payment to artists and little so far has been said about sound quality, Tidal’s two main selling points (as well as a space on the moral high ground). A small portion of the contract Apple is offering to the record labels, which was obtained by Digital Music news, stated that Apple would pay “no licence or royalty fees” during an accounts three month trial, which would be a significant loss of revenue. The contract also shows that Apple will pay out 58% of subscription revenues, markedly lower than Spotify’s approximate 70%. In all likelihood the platform won’t improve the payment situation for artists, but in actual fact make it far worse as people migrate from downloading albums on iTunes for €9.99 each to “renting” unlimited music for the same price every month.

So have Apple revolutionised music? The short answer is no. Unlike with the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010, they have not created a new market; now they are trying to muscle their way into an existing one. They have a lot going for them: millions of Apple acolytes, 800 million credit cards already on file adding to the ease of transition, plenty of clout with the record labels and it will offer the most services of any music platform. But convenience, not innovation, was the order of the day and if Apple ends up winning the “streaming wars” it will not be because they provided the highest quality service. Despite Drake, Reznor and Iovine repeating the word “art” and having some honest-to-God live (terrible) music at the end, no indication was given that Apple Music would provide a bigger share of the profits to the artists themselves than Spotify does now. Like it or not, Apple and its cronies are going to call this a revolution, although to some it might seem like a reign of terror. Apple Music will be available for Apple customers only from the 30th June but the date has not been set for its general release yet.

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