Roger Fingas
Curated content will be how Apple Music sets itself apart from numerous rivals in the streaming music market, Jimmy Iovine said in a new interview published on Thursday.
"Music deserves elegance and the distribution right now is not great," he told the London Evening Standard, referring to competing services as "utilities" that are "sterile, programmed by algorithms and numbing." To help deliver curated content, Apple hired "hundreds" of people, Iovine said.
That included Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe, recruited from the BBC. Iovine explained that while it was difficult to convince Lowe to move from London to Los Angeles, he recognized Lowe's value. The DJ's accomplishments with Beats 1 in 19 weeks "shouldn't have been possible," Iovine added.
The executive also remarked that he actually sees other kinds of entertainment as Apple Music's main competition, not streaming rivals like Spotify, Rdio, or Tidal.
Looking back on Apple's reaction to an open letter by Taylor Swift, asking the company to pay rights holders for Apple Music trial streaming, Iovine said that he received a call from Apple Internet chief Eddy Cue, who allegedly described the letter as a "drag." Initially, Iovine suggested that there might be something Swift didn't understand. Cue prompted Iovine to call Scott Borchetta, the head of Swift's record label.
"I called Scott, I called Eddy back, Eddy and Tim [Cook, Apple CEO] called me back and we said, 'Hey, you know what, we want this system to be right and we want artists to be comfortable, let's do it'."
Had Apple not agreed to make the changes proposed by Swift and others, labels, writers, and musicians would not have been paid for the first three months of the service, and lost out on substantial amounts of income from future subscribers.
Marko Zivkovic
Mike Wuerthele
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
Christine McKee
William Gallagher
Chip Loder
32 Comments
Straight Outta Cupertino
I had not heard of Beats until reading about Apple's purchase. I signed up to Beats to try it out and now have converted to Apple Music. I liked the seemingly unlimited selection going back decades and the curated playlists I found for artists (Jazz greats and new ones. Piano and Cello, Violin ) and genre (Jazz, Classical, old Folk performers, '50s-'60s rock). Apple Music has kept the flexibility of Beats but I think the UI is better; library is more than I'll be able to listen to and the curation seems to have widened.
I think Apple Music will be a success.
And yet we couldn't use acoustic fingerprinting tech (that's already in iTunes Match) in iCloud Music Library...
I think the jury is still WAY out on Apple Music. My experience hasn't been great. The new Music app is very complicated, and it makes me wonder if Apple decided that Ease of Use isn't cool anymore. Plus, lots of annoyances like asking Siri to play a song that I own, and instead, she plays the same titled song but a slightly different version through Apple Music. The software should be smart enough to play the songs and versions I know and already OWN and have on my phone, instead of some less familiar variant online. This dumb oversight leads to other little complications that marr the experience. This morning, I was driving my daughter to camp. We hopped in the car and told Siri to play "Apple's and Bananas" as we were backing out of a long driveway. Instead of playing the version we already had on the phone, Siri played the Apple Music online version (same artist -- Raffi -- but not the concert recording we know and love) but since we were in the car backing slowly away from the house, our internet connection to Wifi kept getting weaker and weaker, so the stupid song kept pausing until we were all the way down the block, and the iPhone finally switched to 4G cellular data. Thanks, Apple, for not being able to figure out these minor but important details ahead of time. You used to do that, which made all the difference. Just more evidence that the Apple experience under Tim Cook is getting more complicated, sloppier and buggier. More and more, it's feeling like I'm using Microsoft products in the early 2000s....
[quote name="k2director" url="/t/187519/apple-music-has-hundreds-working-on-curation-jimmy-iovine-says#post_2757579"]I think the jury is still WAY out on Apple Music. My experience hasn't been great. The new Music app is very complicated, and it makes me wonder if Apple decided that Ease of Use isn't cool anymore. Plus, lots of annoyances like asking Siri to play a song that I own, and instead, she plays the same titled song but a slightly different version through Apple Music. The software should be smart enough to play the songs and versions I know and already OWN and have on my phone, instead of some less familiar variant online. This dumb oversight leads to other little complications that marr the experience. This morning, I was driving my daughter to camp. We hopped in the car and told Siri to play "Apple's and Bananas" as we were backing out of a long driveway. Instead of playing the version we already had on the phone, Siri played the Apple Music online version (same artist -- Raffi -- but not the concert recording we know and love) but since we were in the car backing slowly away from the house, our internet connection to Wifi kept getting weaker and weaker, so the stupid song kept pausing until we were all the way down the block, and the iPhone finally switched to 4G cellular data. Thanks, Apple, for not being able to figure out these minor but important details ahead of time. You used to do that, which made all the difference. Just more evidence that the Apple experience under Tim Cook is getting more complicated, and sloppier. It's increasingly feeling like I'm using Microsoft products in the early 2000s....[/quote] I'm beginning to fear Cook is the new John Sculley.