He's one of the world's most successful record producers and also co-founder of Interscope. He worked on Springsteen, Tom Petty, U2, Dire Straits, John Lennon records and more.
>The company was formally established in 2006,[1] a time when Iovine perceived two key problems in the music industry...
My understanding is he essentially WAS Beats, with Dre lending his name and like consulting on style and whatnot. Iovine being the brains. That has carried over to Apple where Iovine works full-time and Dre does not. Apple wanted Iovine.
Looking forward to ditching Spotify. Stopped paying once they removed Cmd-F filtering and the app started to lag on my 2014 Macbook Pro (with dedicated GPU).
Also, I agree with the keynote speakers, Spotify "Radio" never worked for me. Always got repeated songs or songs I hated.
I wanted automated "thumbs up" if I finished a song, or "thumbs down" if I skipped it, without having to worry about repeated songs.
I don't have a compelling reason to leave spotify yet, but I'm open to changing. I think their redesigned app aesthetic is pretty nice. I have good luck with the radio and repeated songs, but I wish it were smarter about genre/mood matching.
This has started to get to me. It seems like if I pick any even mildly obscure artist as the seed for a radio stream, I've got high chances of the same songs showing up in the first half hour even across different days.
I'm so glad I finally have an alternative to Spotify. They removed staring, apps, and filtering. Their radio is abysmal (almost as bad as Pandora).
What I'd really like to see is a radio feature that plays songs that sound like the song you requested. What all these algorithms seem todo is play songs that other people listened to after or before the song you requested. Or they just play something in the same genre. Genres are kind of dead now, so it doesn't make sense to recommend songs this way. Why not suggest songs with similar guitar riffs? Why not suggest songs with artists that have similar voices?
How I wish they would open up that API. It would be so cool to search for music based on attributes, as in "give me a song in minor, with an electric guitar lead, with a virtuosic guitar solo, with female vocals, and with electronic instruments". You can kind of do that now by Googling the Spotify keywords, but it's not perfect. And what if you could create a custom radio based on attributes? Even better!
I fear that if Pandora ever goes away, this immense collection of musical knowledge will go with it.
> What all these algorithms seem todo is play songs that other people listened to after or before the song you requested. Or they just play something in the same genre.
and I am pretty sure that, under the hood, this is not what they are doing. They really are using individual attributes about the song (e.g., tenor vocalist, minimalism, heavy distortion, etc.) to try and find something that sounds the same.
So I think your real complaint is "I don't think the algorithms are good enough yet, even though they are trying to do exactly what I want".
The problem is that it is very expensive for Pandora to onboard new content, as compared to a pure recommendation engine approach. They'll never have the depth of catalog to make it anything more than a curiosity.
Google Music does this pretty well for me. The one issue I have with it is that their radio selections will repeat songs, but there's a "reroll this station" button that builds a new playlist on demand.
Another Spotify customer here ready to jump ship. The entire iTunes catalog and Family Sharing are the 2 features I was hoping for and I'm really happy to see them available from release.
The entire iTunes catalog available for streaming would be a killer feature. Where did you see hear that the entire catalog would be available to stream?
> First, it’s iTunes. iTunes on-demand and in the cloud, where you can search for and stream any song available in the library. (It’s a huge, huge library.)
Don't forget the the annoying red notification bubble when a new song has being added to a playlist. Which never needs a notification bubble.
That simple thing will make me switch instantly to Apple Music. The Spotify app was so much better a couple of years ago when just a few people worked on it.
cmd+f is back now, but I agree that was a breathtakingly bad product decision, I'm amazed they removed the feature and left it out for like two months. It's not like it's a hard product to dog food or they otherwise have shitty product sense.
It's funny how much of Apple functionality is tightly coupled with US. In my city (capital of my country) Apple Maps are worthless, Siri suggestions are worthless, PayPass is worthless, Apple Pay is worthless, iTunes Movies are not available, Bookstore is not available. Now streaming will be worthless too, because mobile data plan for 1 GB per month costs more than this Apple Stream (though I might listen to it at home or at work, but I prefer to listen music in car or while walking, so it's less attractive).
"Beats One" sounds like it's halfway an attempt to move into the SiriusXM space - live radio over the 'net and on devices, with actual DJs and so on, packaged in a way that's slicker than most internet radio streams. It will be interesting to see if it's any good.
The "connect" feature is eerily reminiscent of Ping if you remember that. It was part of iTunes and was a failure from the start and subsequently killed at some point. I'm really wondering if they will succeed this time.
Yes it was. I think the main difference this time will be integration with Twitter and Facebook. If the artists know that what they post on it can show up in Facebook and/or Twitter they'd be more likely to use it. We'll see. It could flop like Ping, or it might not.
I don't quite understand why they put so much emphasis on 24/7 radio. First, I knew few (younger) people who listen to radio. Second, it's technically not that impressive.
But most importantly: music is very divisive and tastes differ greatly. Apple has usually done a great job to keep their image as neutral as possible. There's a reason why the types of artists they generally associate with are rather inoffensive (Coldplay, The Beatles) or at worst found annoying (U2, or rather Bono).
So who gets excited about such a radio station?
(I just saw Drake get on stage, which actually illustrates this. He's neutral enough to not offend, but because it's music, I imagine a collective groan from pretty much all of my friends.)
To be clear, it's kind of a cute idea, but why emphasize it so much?
Exactly. Music is one of the most hype-sensitive industries. It's good that Apple is in the space, but they should be very careful about trying to be 'cool' about it. When they had U2 play some hits, that was innocuous enough. When they released a 'few U2 album' that was actually offensive to people (for a variety of reasons). Then, when Bono came on-stage and high-fived Cook, well, let's forget that moment. Surely their PR 'feelers' are aware of this and should've warned them that letting Drake ramble on stage would not be a great idea...
Radio still has to be a wildly popular format, even though I don't listen to it anymore. Otherwise, Sirius/XM wouldn't still be in business, despite having a limited selection of music and terrible sound quality. All those subscribers can't just be there for Howard Stern.
Also, digital music has become extremely popular, just not online radio. That could be an issue of quality (low) compared to selection (high) or just that a lot of people who utilize connected devices for music prefer listening to their music on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, etc.
By investing in both sides of the fence, on-demand and curated, they can capture both audiences. And by hiring people like Zane Lowe, they are giving people additional reasons to go listen to radio vs. on-demand.
Fashion and taste is a huge part of apple's brand (and the "Beats" brand), and can definitely be apple's competitive advantage in the music space. There's really only two ways for a streaming service to differentiate itself: exclusive content and curated content. If they aren't going for the exclusives, they have to depend on radio.
I think you're underestimating the popularity of radio, too. Pandora and songza are purely radio services, and spotify, google music, and rdio all heavily promote their radio services.
My problem is not the 'radio' part. My problem is that it's a single, 24/7 station, and that they made such a huge deal out of it. The radio concept in itself is indeed very nice, and still very popular (in various forms).
All the examples you name either adapt to your tastes, or offer different 'channels' for different genres. I do see the appeal of that. In fact, I love discovery, and human-powered discovery can be amazing.
The thing that doesn't make sense is that it's 1) a single station, and 2) in no way adjusted to the time and tastes of particular locations.
Why would anyone want to listen to that with exactly the kinds of alternatives you name, on top of the fact that a countless amount of more specific stations can be listened to online?
To make a comparison: imagine if Apple released a new Apple TV and then spent a big chunk of time promoting their single, world-wide channel.
Do you know any people who put on the tv and watch whatever comes on nowadays, without switching channels a few times? And if so, do those people do this because they prefer it over, say, Popcorn Time or Netflix, or just because they're used to doing so, and probably pretty old?
Again, releasing such a 24/7 channel in itself is a nice idea. It just seems really odd to put such an emphasis on it.
The whole problem with radio is that it completely misses how music is consumed nowadays.
It's no longer driven by the ivory tower of the music industry.
The whole idea of playlists created by others is that it exposes me as a listener to the long tail of music, mostly composed of everything I want to listen and more. I discover new sounds based on the fact that I am now able to find that other person on the other side of the world who shares my taste. I can skip through the songs and get right to the content I want.
I drive my listening experience, versus the radio station.
How much airplay will unsigned artists get on the 24/7?
This isn't snark, it's a serious question - inspired by the influence 70s and 80s DJs like John Peel had.
They literally made entire careers by playing non-mainstream music no one else would touch. Some of it got a first airing as a demo cassette. Hundreds of bands recorded special sessions for those shows. Some of those sessions became legendary recordings in their own right.
Will this Apple product do anything like that? Or will it be the usual suspects playing the Official Industry Approved Top Downloads list, with no risks of any kind?
I don't think Zane Lowe's discovery list - which includes a short list of middle-of-the-roaders like Adele and Ed Sheeran - is in quite the same league as John Peel's.
IMO that's the key to their offering. Even with all the ways streaming services offer to discover music they fail miserably. Radio is a good way to discover, they have some top class DJ's on board AND I have a hope that people won't be able to buy their way on to it which means that the DJ's can actually play music they sincerely like.
I think you're thinking of radio in it's current form and that's why you don't like the idea - I wouldn't either. But if the DJ's have completely free reign I can see it being really great.
"Free reign" or not, the last thing we need right now is more music shoved into our ears because it's what a few people think we should listen to.
"Really great" is subjective in music, movies, and pretty much anything related to art or entertainment.
Netflix has it right - everyone has individual tastes, so everyone should get individual recommendations. If the quality of those recommendations/algorithms is poor, then that's where the innovation needs to happen (in my opinion).
First of all it's not being shoved in your ear. You can choose to listen and they offer curated playlists etc. as alternative discovery mechanisms. I use Netflix everyday - and usually end up watching repeats of TV episodes because I have no idea what to watch. I use Spotify all day and listen to stuff I know because their radio and playlists are shit. Beasts was the one app I found that actually offered good suggestions or albums and playlists and I spent most of my time on their reconditions screen. Algorithms don't work for this stuff. Maybe they will and we can keep working on it but for now good human curation + algorithms is the key.
Except that those recommendations are really poor. And it's not clear to me at all that there's any way to scale the incoming dataset large enough to get useful results from it. Netflix might have good algorithms but they are handicapped by the shape of their catalog. Music has a much, much larger selection space and currently nobody has a sufficiently deep usage history to make "if you listened to x, you'll likely listen to y" work.
Anywhere but smack dab in the center of the distribution algorithmic music recommendation engines fail completely (save for Pandora, which has a different small catalog problem.)
I agree, especially about Netflix and Pandora's poor recommendations as a product of their limited catalog. I don't however think that humans are any better in this regard. Humans also tend to recommend near the center of a distribution of tastes, and when they stray from that, it's out of a deliberate move to find something new/different. Algorithms can do the same (and many do), but many of those suffer from other problems - such as poor interfaces or limited catalogs as mentioned.
Just because no one has done it really well yet, that doesn't mean we should all go back to human-curated playlists in my opinion.
Edit to add: Perhaps part of my reluctance to rely on DJ's and human-curated playlists is a lack of trust. When a person recommends something to the masses, my gut instinct is to question motives (who is being promoted and why). When an algorithm recommends something to me as part of an unlimited service, I tend to feel like it's been tailored to me for no reason other than to maximize my enjoyment (though admittedly, the truth is that algorithms may be built with just as much - if not more - questionable bias as any human).
I get my music recommendations from music blogs or my local record store, and I always always always find them more relevant than anything an algorithm poops out. Finding a way to scale that up would be interesting, but I also don't really think that there's a lot of money in it. Google could do this, really, or Facebook, I suppose, because they have the huge amount of activity data that could be used to take the place of "Hey, I like this Galactic Cannibal record, what else should I be listening to?"
Music discovery is becoming HARD because the entire A&R scouting system and top 40 radio model is falling apart. I do not want to listen to 200 garage bands to see if any of them is the next Nirvana; I'm quite happy if Apple is going to pay Zane Lowe to do that for me.
This is not one radio station, this is a ton of channels, like SiriusXM and Spotify, which are quite successful. This is also about competing versus Youtube/Google Music in the music discovery business.
No, Beats 1 is literally one channel and they made a huge deal about it being the first global radio station (except for the millions of other internet radio stations I guess).
I think they were making a huge deal about the first global 24/7 live radio station. Most of the other Internet radio stations I know aren't live 24/7.
Live meaning some DJ is going to talk instead of having music on isn't a feature in my book. That said, iHeartRadio has hundreds if not thousands of live 24/7 stations. That's just from one provider too, there are tons of 24/7 live internet radio stations.
> I don't quite understand why they put so much emphasis on 24/7 radio.
Another thing is that they're lying when they say it's the first global 24/7 live DJ-driven radio station. The BBC's music stations have been broadcasting live and timeshifted online for about 15 years already, unrestricted. I'm sure other broadcasters also do this.
There are quite a lot of local radio stations that broadcast online for anyone to listen. I picked my favorite local station (http://kslx.com/), found their website, and there's a "Listen Live" button right there.
It seems rather ignorant - willful or otherwise - to claim that this is something groundbreaking. I have no doubt it'll be well-executed, but at best it can be evolutionary, not revolutionary.
I would kill to be able to go to the party Spotify will undoubtedly throw tonight.
There wasn't one thing in the entire presentation that was even intriguing, let alone in innovative. The reason I loved my iPod is because I didn't have to listen to the radio. And now Apple is making that the killer feature? RADIO? Like it's freaking 2002?
Other than that and artist communication (which I would maybe care about for one artist), Apple Music is Spotify. Their solution for finding what you want to listen to? "I like rock and alternative" (whatever that means). This has been done a dozen times, and rarely well.
Spotify has been iterating exact same concept for years and has all of my friends listening to it, as well as all of my playlists. People tell me Rdio is similar, but I've never had reason to use it. The only way Apple wins is if the power of something being the Apple default is truly that strong. Having Siri integration is literally the only thing that Apple has a leg up on any of the other music services on.
And then they call it "revolutionary" and throw it in a "ONE MORE THING!" slot? That's pretty bad. And I'm an Apple fanboy.
"The only way this wins is if the power of something being the Apple default is truly that strong."
For something like this, yeah, Apple default is probably that strong. Considering that it'll button right into all of their hardware (laptop, iPad, iPhone), I could see it being a fairly significant thing for them. It's one less app to have to use, one less payment interface to deal with, and integrate with whatever music the user already has.
Not to mention that Apple probably has a lot more clout in the bargaining arena with the record labels than Spotify does, and a LOT more cash to throw around.
> For something like this, yeah, Apple default is probably that strong.
I would generally agree; for the vast majority of people the "notes" app works just fine, no need to install evernote or simplenote or whatever.
But in this instance, Apple is expecting you to shell out $10/month. I think that likely kills most of the inertia of, "Well, it's on my phone, I don't need another app." I could be wrong, though. Regardless, I'm not cancelling my Spotify subscription anytime soon.
>But in this instance, Apple is expecting you to shell out $10/month.
Spotify asks for that too. And unlike Spotify, Apple already has your payment details. You don't even need to enter your password with this thumb thing.
I've been an avid Rhapsody user since the early days. One thing that still annoys me about Rhapsody on iOS devices is that if the app has been closed or backgrounded (not playing music) for long enough, hitting the "play" button in control center (or bluetooth devices) often goes back to playing from iTunes - which I don't use.
The ideal solution would be Apple fixing that - allowing for a user-defined default player. I'm sad to say it, but if that doesn't become a reality, I may be tempted to switch to Apple's streaming service for that one reason alone.
That's the exact reason they designed it that way.
Apple is intended to be a walled garden rather than a true equal platform for the app devs. As much as I like Apple hardware I hate their mobile OS because of this approach of building special integrations for their built in apps that you can't even remove, while denying other app devs access to the full range of device integration, except if you go through their limited API's.
They have one thing I'm missing from Spotify: music videos. I was all excited about the "video in Spotify" announcement, only to discover they meant podcasts and TV shows. Maybe this announcement causes some movement.
Just to provide an alternative view, I listen to Spotify in my house, but in the car I almost always listen to XM. There is something attractive about not needing to think about what is going to play.
>I would kill to be able to go to the party Spotify will undoubtedly throw tonight.
Yeah, a new service that offers a larger selection for the same price, and will be preinstalled to the majority of their customers phones, and free for 3 months will sure be a great cause for celebration...
>The reason I loved my iPod is because I didn't have to listen to the radio.
And one reason iPod et al. got boring and people turned to places like Spotify is because it's not radio (that is, it's not a shared social experience). That's why stuff like Spotify playlists (curated music) got hundreds of thousands of subscribers. And DJs haven't died, they just took it outside radio, and into arenas, because modern radio has both annoying ads and marketing-oriented programming, something that this announcement is not meant to share.
If done right it could be big, and things can come and go in circles. Heck, there are millions of hipster kids out there buying vinyl, which wasn't even in fashion when they were born.
Indeed. While Apple's execution may be lacking (I don't know if it is), I think it's much more likely that the Spotify people are a bit nervous right now.
My point was that Spotify people are probably a lot less nervous today than they were yesterday. Apple could have completely crushed the company in one fell swoop. Now it looks like they only maybe did that.
Regardless, the marketing behind it was atrocious, relative to standard Apple marketing. The entire "one last thing" of the keynote was, in a word, cringeworthy.
Spotify is horrible. The UI suck, the interface sucks, there is no decent way of organizing my favorite music, discovery is meh (although the only thing that has actually been improving instead of getting worse). And killing the apps has completely reduced the usefulness to streaming all the music available, but only if you know exactly what you want or are satisfied with bland prefab playlists.
The only reason I listen to Spotify is because there is no decent alternative with a sufficient catalog. Like many, I've been dying for a better alternative.
I don't know if Apple Music will be it, but I do remember what the iPod and iTunes did to the MP3 player.
>I don't quite understand why they put so much emphasis on 24/7 radio. First, I knew few (younger) people who listen to radio.
This can change if there's a enticing offering. Ads, endless automated playlists and crappy programming are not very interesting even for older people. But someone with a unique radio program can potentially get a large following -- like EDM DJs have.
>Second, it's technically not that impressive.
A social service is not about the technology anyway.
>But most importantly: music is very divisive and tastes differ greatly.
That's rather a problem with endless fragmentation than something nice and desirable. Music can also be a uniting force -- and in the past it was, with people able to listen to many genres, not just celebrate their small corner of the music world.
I'm open to the idea that it could work, I guess. But I just can't imagine an 'enticing offering'. What would you consider enticing?
Furthermore, they're not competing with existing radio, but rather with things like Pandora's part-human algorithms and Spotify's many human-curated playlist. As well as the thousands of radio stations that broadcast online.
> That's rather a problem with endless fragmentation than something nice and desirable. Music can also be a uniting force -- and in the past it was, with people able to listen to many genres, not just celebrate their small corner of the music world.
I'd say people moved primarily to non-radio alternatives (big music libraries on devices, spotify/pandora/etc.) because they preferred them, and they finally could do so conveniently. This same phenomenon can be seen in the move away from tv toward on-demand select-your-preference solutions like Netflix (or online streaming via Popcorn time or certain websites).
Or to turn it around: I've never heard anyone complain that they wished they didn't have to 'celebrate their small corner of the music world' and would rather move back to single sources of music if not for the advertising and programming. People love their little corners because it is part of their identity.
I wouldn't disregard it so quick. A good radio host can garner attention and if Apple finds themselves with something like a captivating morning show or lively interview program, they can build an audience. Radio is good at spreading by word of mouth because it can capture a person during their drive and gives them something to talk to coworkers about. If Apple makes it prominent on people's phones, it would be easy to spread.
It would make no sense for people to be excited about a radio station before it launches outside of the DJ's previous audience. There is nothing to hook people in yet. I personally listen to the CBC news on the radio everyday and if Apple launched a news station... who knows. It's not really an area that any other big tech companies are competing in. Sports radio is great if you are a sports fan, maybe they'll expand to that. Other talk radio as well, people love it and live call in shows with a "community" of listeners is still a concept best served in radio.
Commercial radio is terrible because it doesn't make a revenue like it used to. I think people dismiss it more so due to it's low quality than the fact that they can curate their own music now. Playing your own music in your car isn't a new concept.
Wild guess, but maybe radio is part of a long term vehicle plan. Broadcast radio is a significant part of the vehicle user experience. Highest radio ratings during a weekday are 7:45AM.
Also, it's not like running an internet radio station is very expensive anyways. Apple can afford it.
Anyways... No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
It's not even the entire feature set. For instance, it seems like I can't control different devices with it, which has lately grown to be an essential feature for me — 60% of the time when I have my phone on the charger, I can just yell 'Okay, Google' from across the room, and Spotify will put whatever music I ask it to on my PC's speakers.
Considering the Music app is probably one of the few that nearly everybody uses and they're completely changing how that works and how they want you to enjoy music it seems like just the right amount of pomp and circumstance.
So with "News" and "Music", Apple's positioning themselves as a provider of curated, editorialized content. Isn't this a bit like the old Yahoo/MSN portal play? Are Apple betting they can actually found and fund a media consumption channel solely through subscriptions?
Apple only ever got away with this kind of breathless self-pimping because of Jobs. He had a unique panache that infected Apple with a curious energy. It's been really interesting watching Apple move past Steve. In many ways, they're killing it, in others, you can really feel the slow dissipation of Jobs' halo.
It was a very un-Apple-like presentation. Apple has a reputation for rehearsing presentations many times. The presentations are critiqued in order to make sure they are clear and to the point.
These presenters didn't fit the usual model. They acted like hadn't rehearsed much (Iovine in particular). It was wildly unclear what, exactly, they were talking about. Lots of abstract hand-waving instead of keeping things concrete and clear.
Eddy Cue was embarrassing. He made so many grammatical errors it was like he was winging it, and when he tries to seem hip it's cringeworthy. There was a moment where he queued some stuff up and then stiffly said, "yeah! I think I'm really gonna enjoy this playlist!" as if anybody in history has ever exclaimed that.
iTunes Radio, Apple's first attempt in this space, is awful. X skips per hour? Really? The story went that Apple's execs actually had no idea how Spotify worked so thought they really had something.
It's the kind of fiasco that would've earned the execs a bollicking in the Jobs days and, to me, the buck had to stop at Tim Cook.
I'm a paid Spotify subscriber. Generally I like it but it has its warts:
- They did an app update a few months ago that's viewed as pretty much universally awful for reasons I can't really explain;
- Their catalog has many holes (eg Australian music, in this case probably because Spotify doesn't have an Australian service);
- I used to think artists were being Luddites by opting out but there's actually good reason for this. They don't earn royalties proportional to the actual plays. The royalty scheme imposed by the record companies gives a disproportionate amount to currently popular artists;
- Because of the last point you have artists who are missing or, in some cases, you have all their songs except their 1-2 money makers;
- Worse, for some songs, particularly for things from the 70s for some reason, you can't get the original. You just get some shitty remaster that sounds like bad karaoke.
- Spotify's radio feature is the real weak point for me. Repeats (sometimes with only a song in between) and the thumbing up and down I don't think really has the desired effect. Like I might be on a good string of songs but I know the worst thing I can do is thumb anything up OR down as experience has taught me this can only make things worse.
Really "thumbs up" should probably mean "don't change anything". Or at least me listening to something in full is itself is a positive indicator.
That being said, I'm not really sure you can do satisfying recommendations here. So much of music is I think tied to memory and nostalgia. You might like a particular song because of a particular person, place, time or event. How does liking that inform any other music choice?
At the same time your radio playlist has to be large enough not to be too repetitive.
What's more, there's actually an art to playlist selection. It's why, for example, at a concert you'll generally see a band start with something upbeat, play anything a bit more mellow in the middle and finish on a high note.
Curated playlists (which I guess Apple is calling "guest DJs" because that's what it amounts to) is an idea with some history (eg Songza, bought by Google last year I think).
I actually find myself listening to iHeartRadio a lot. I pick a music style I'm in the mood for and just try different stations until I find something not too objectionable. Sure there are DJs (99% irritating) and some ads but at least I don't need to build a playlist, worry about what's on Spotify and what isn't or make a decision each song about whether to thumb it up or down. It's it or nothing (well... something else).
There's already a Beats Music app on Android, and possibly with a not-insignificant subscriber base. Since Apple Music is replacing Beats Music outright they probably didn't want to leave those subscribers out in the cold. They'd basically be handing over customers to Spotify and Rdio.
I think the most exciting part of Apple Music is the idea of allowing musicians to put their music into the apple store. Much like the Apple store gave a storefront to small indie developers, this might do the same for musicians worldwide. The idea that a small time guy can get a small profit via the app store instead of just posting onto Youtube and crossing his or her fingers is cool.
Aside from that, I really have expected thought changes more than anything from Apple WWDC and this one is just disappointing.
Little guys have always been able to get music on iTunes. CDBaby/Tunecore etc. allow you to upload your music and have it distributed everywhere including iTunes and Spotify. Artists will still want to go through those services as they enable you to upload one place and be available everywhere.
Would have been a great 5-minute update - "we're adding in direct interactions with artists, and a cool new worldwide radio station DJed by a couple really clued-in people. It's reasonably priced and works with all your existing iTunes stuff. First three months free!!"
But that looong, rambling explanation of every little feature, punctuated by clips from hip-but-safe artists, was entirely too much show for it.
Strongly agree. As a user who enjoys their products, I actually hope this flops as hard as Ping did. I want them to focus on hardware, OS, and related services, and not so much on ... whatever the hell this was.
So what is this new product? The Apple site doesn't say.
If you just want background music, try Radio Coast.[1]. This is a successful streaming music project which annoys the RIAA because it doesn't have to pay royalties. Years ago Seeburg, the jukebox manufacturer, offered a background music service, using a special record changer which played 1000 songs over and over. The music was recorded by their own in-house musicians, so they didn't have to pay the RIAA. They never copyrighted the records, which you had to do back then to get copyright protection. Instead, they used a primitive form of DRM - the speed, record size, groove width, and hole size are all nonstandard.
All those records have been converted to files, and there's a streaming site. Hundreds of hours of 1950s elevator music.
The link just open a modal with "Introducing Apple music".. I couldn't find a way to watch the video or text associated with it. Is it a browser issue? Or is the link wrong?
Concerning Radio: While I like the general idea of putting human curators in charge, I think the very broad target audience and the mainstream appeal + expectations of Apple will render this service close to useless for anyone who's really deep into music. I don't want to sound like a hipster, but I spent a lot of time digging up old and new gems in music and I really don't expect Apple's radio station to bring a lot of worthwhile discoveries to the table.
The format itself is great - NTS radio has been doing similar stuff for years, independent from ad money or any other influences, just the taste of the respective show host. Apple however? They have to appeal, in general, to everyone and you can't have it both ways - it's either deep, niche and interesting to a small crowd...or very wide and superficial.
Playlists: The suggestions coming from their playlists, don't sound more interesting than what rdio and probably every other streaming service (I don't use Spotify, can't compare) is doing - we saw Bruce Springsteen and "Big Rock" as automated playlists in the demo - not the hardest usecase I imagine. I'm less confident when it comes to obscure jazz fusion krautrock crossovers from the early 1970s. In that case you'll probably have to get your hands dirty yourself, with countless open tabs just like it has been for years. Not that I'm complaining, I enjoy going down those rabbit holes.
>> "They have to appeal, in general, to everyone and you can't have it both ways - it's either deep, niche and interesting to small crowd...or very wide and superficial."
Why can't they can do 'shows' like regular radio catering to different tastes?
Have you ever used iTunes Radio? I find it to be better than Pandora for connecting and discovering hidden gems that I don't know about. I'm guessing Apple Music will use the same kind of 'genius' information.
>As Tim Cook and Jimmy Iovine revealed Apple's music streaming service on Monday, Spotify's Daniel Ek, whose streaming service is a direct competitor to Apple's, tweeted a two-word reaction that summed up his feels: "Oh ok."
Before talking about doing 'revoluationary' things in the music industry, I would love it if iTunes reliably had the music I paid for every time I opened it up instead of a greyed out list item with an ambiguous cloud icon next to it.
Oh I know. This kills me. Make sure iTunes Match is turned on in your Settings > Music. Somehow it got switched off on mine at one point or another. After turning it back on, everything is appearing now. I'm still not incredibly happy with the streaming though. Sometimes a song will end mid song and go to the next one. I kind of wish it could keep a cache of the last couple hundred songs I listened to to reduce network usage as well.
Spotify has done a far, far better of integration with devices like Home Theater receivers than Apple has. Airplay works on my receiver, but Spotify is awesome. Fire up a playlist on the laptop, close it, switch to my phone, it can now control the playlist I started on the phone which is now running on the receiver.
The receiver itself plays the music directly rather than being streamed from the device I started playing on. Nifty.
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[ 471 ms ] story [ 1874 ms ] threadhttp://www.engadget.com/2015/06/01/apple-beats-streaming-10-...
And free ad supported stations as well.
http://www.apple.com/music/
Really Apple Revolutionary? You are years late tot he game and you bought Beats. Revolutionary and you have Jimmy Iovinne do the presentation?
Many speculated that was partially a talent acquisition, to get him working on projects exactly like this.
>The company was formally established in 2006,[1] a time when Iovine perceived two key problems in the music industry...
My understanding is he essentially WAS Beats, with Dre lending his name and like consulting on style and whatnot. Iovine being the brains. That has carried over to Apple where Iovine works full-time and Dre does not. Apple wanted Iovine.
Also, I agree with the keynote speakers, Spotify "Radio" never worked for me. Always got repeated songs or songs I hated.
I wanted automated "thumbs up" if I finished a song, or "thumbs down" if I skipped it, without having to worry about repeated songs.
And a million of other complaints.
Didn't realize Ctrl-F was ever a thing in Spotify. But I just tried it and it works for me (MacBook Pro). I'll be trying that out more now.
self.addComponent(new Filterable()) or some shit and it would have added Cmd/Ctrl-F
This has started to get to me. It seems like if I pick any even mildly obscure artist as the seed for a radio stream, I've got high chances of the same songs showing up in the first half hour even across different days.
What I'd really like to see is a radio feature that plays songs that sound like the song you requested. What all these algorithms seem todo is play songs that other people listened to after or before the song you requested. Or they just play something in the same genre. Genres are kind of dead now, so it doesn't make sense to recommend songs this way. Why not suggest songs with similar guitar riffs? Why not suggest songs with artists that have similar voices?
Isn't this exactly what Pandora does?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project
I fear that if Pandora ever goes away, this immense collection of musical knowledge will go with it.
It's a start. I don't think you can query it on specific attributes like that yet.
> What all these algorithms seem todo is play songs that other people listened to after or before the song you requested. Or they just play something in the same genre.
and I am pretty sure that, under the hood, this is not what they are doing. They really are using individual attributes about the song (e.g., tenor vocalist, minimalism, heavy distortion, etc.) to try and find something that sounds the same.
So I think your real complaint is "I don't think the algorithms are good enough yet, even though they are trying to do exactly what I want".
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/06/08Introducing-Apple...
Also alluded to here in the Apple presser:
> whether from the iTunes Store® or ripped CDs — your music now lives in one place alongside the Apple Music catalog with over 30 million songs.
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/06/08Introducing-Apple...
That simple thing will make me switch instantly to Apple Music. The Spotify app was so much better a couple of years ago when just a few people worked on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping
But most importantly: music is very divisive and tastes differ greatly. Apple has usually done a great job to keep their image as neutral as possible. There's a reason why the types of artists they generally associate with are rather inoffensive (Coldplay, The Beatles) or at worst found annoying (U2, or rather Bono).
So who gets excited about such a radio station?
(I just saw Drake get on stage, which actually illustrates this. He's neutral enough to not offend, but because it's music, I imagine a collective groan from pretty much all of my friends.)
To be clear, it's kind of a cute idea, but why emphasize it so much?
"Web Radio Not Making Waves - An unfulfilled Internet vision: thousands of low-cost stations to challenge the status quo."
as titled by LA Times in December 13, 2001, see the article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011216053056/http://www.latime...
(Many web radio stations are still alive, but the hype is gone)
Also, digital music has become extremely popular, just not online radio. That could be an issue of quality (low) compared to selection (high) or just that a lot of people who utilize connected devices for music prefer listening to their music on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, etc.
By investing in both sides of the fence, on-demand and curated, they can capture both audiences. And by hiring people like Zane Lowe, they are giving people additional reasons to go listen to radio vs. on-demand.
[1] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2002-07-...
I think you're underestimating the popularity of radio, too. Pandora and songza are purely radio services, and spotify, google music, and rdio all heavily promote their radio services.
All the examples you name either adapt to your tastes, or offer different 'channels' for different genres. I do see the appeal of that. In fact, I love discovery, and human-powered discovery can be amazing.
The thing that doesn't make sense is that it's 1) a single station, and 2) in no way adjusted to the time and tastes of particular locations.
Why would anyone want to listen to that with exactly the kinds of alternatives you name, on top of the fact that a countless amount of more specific stations can be listened to online?
To make a comparison: imagine if Apple released a new Apple TV and then spent a big chunk of time promoting their single, world-wide channel.
Do you know any people who put on the tv and watch whatever comes on nowadays, without switching channels a few times? And if so, do those people do this because they prefer it over, say, Popcorn Time or Netflix, or just because they're used to doing so, and probably pretty old?
Again, releasing such a 24/7 channel in itself is a nice idea. It just seems really odd to put such an emphasis on it.
It's no longer driven by the ivory tower of the music industry.
The whole idea of playlists created by others is that it exposes me as a listener to the long tail of music, mostly composed of everything I want to listen and more. I discover new sounds based on the fact that I am now able to find that other person on the other side of the world who shares my taste. I can skip through the songs and get right to the content I want.
I drive my listening experience, versus the radio station.
This isn't snark, it's a serious question - inspired by the influence 70s and 80s DJs like John Peel had.
They literally made entire careers by playing non-mainstream music no one else would touch. Some of it got a first airing as a demo cassette. Hundreds of bands recorded special sessions for those shows. Some of those sessions became legendary recordings in their own right.
Will this Apple product do anything like that? Or will it be the usual suspects playing the Official Industry Approved Top Downloads list, with no risks of any kind?
Jimmy Iovine is running this thing. He is the ivory tower. It appears he is trying to recapture the industry.
I think you're thinking of radio in it's current form and that's why you don't like the idea - I wouldn't either. But if the DJ's have completely free reign I can see it being really great.
"Really great" is subjective in music, movies, and pretty much anything related to art or entertainment.
Netflix has it right - everyone has individual tastes, so everyone should get individual recommendations. If the quality of those recommendations/algorithms is poor, then that's where the innovation needs to happen (in my opinion).
Anywhere but smack dab in the center of the distribution algorithmic music recommendation engines fail completely (save for Pandora, which has a different small catalog problem.)
Just because no one has done it really well yet, that doesn't mean we should all go back to human-curated playlists in my opinion.
Edit to add: Perhaps part of my reluctance to rely on DJ's and human-curated playlists is a lack of trust. When a person recommends something to the masses, my gut instinct is to question motives (who is being promoted and why). When an algorithm recommends something to me as part of an unlimited service, I tend to feel like it's been tailored to me for no reason other than to maximize my enjoyment (though admittedly, the truth is that algorithms may be built with just as much - if not more - questionable bias as any human).
Another thing is that they're lying when they say it's the first global 24/7 live DJ-driven radio station. The BBC's music stations have been broadcasting live and timeshifted online for about 15 years already, unrestricted. I'm sure other broadcasters also do this.
It seems rather ignorant - willful or otherwise - to claim that this is something groundbreaking. I have no doubt it'll be well-executed, but at best it can be evolutionary, not revolutionary.
My college radio station did this back in 2003.
There wasn't one thing in the entire presentation that was even intriguing, let alone in innovative. The reason I loved my iPod is because I didn't have to listen to the radio. And now Apple is making that the killer feature? RADIO? Like it's freaking 2002?
Other than that and artist communication (which I would maybe care about for one artist), Apple Music is Spotify. Their solution for finding what you want to listen to? "I like rock and alternative" (whatever that means). This has been done a dozen times, and rarely well.
Spotify has been iterating exact same concept for years and has all of my friends listening to it, as well as all of my playlists. People tell me Rdio is similar, but I've never had reason to use it. The only way Apple wins is if the power of something being the Apple default is truly that strong. Having Siri integration is literally the only thing that Apple has a leg up on any of the other music services on.
And then they call it "revolutionary" and throw it in a "ONE MORE THING!" slot? That's pretty bad. And I'm an Apple fanboy.
For something like this, yeah, Apple default is probably that strong. Considering that it'll button right into all of their hardware (laptop, iPad, iPhone), I could see it being a fairly significant thing for them. It's one less app to have to use, one less payment interface to deal with, and integrate with whatever music the user already has.
Not to mention that Apple probably has a lot more clout in the bargaining arena with the record labels than Spotify does, and a LOT more cash to throw around.
I would generally agree; for the vast majority of people the "notes" app works just fine, no need to install evernote or simplenote or whatever.
But in this instance, Apple is expecting you to shell out $10/month. I think that likely kills most of the inertia of, "Well, it's on my phone, I don't need another app." I could be wrong, though. Regardless, I'm not cancelling my Spotify subscription anytime soon.
Spotify asks for that too. And unlike Spotify, Apple already has your payment details. You don't even need to enter your password with this thumb thing.
The ideal solution would be Apple fixing that - allowing for a user-defined default player. I'm sad to say it, but if that doesn't become a reality, I may be tempted to switch to Apple's streaming service for that one reason alone.
Apple is intended to be a walled garden rather than a true equal platform for the app devs. As much as I like Apple hardware I hate their mobile OS because of this approach of building special integrations for their built in apps that you can't even remove, while denying other app devs access to the full range of device integration, except if you go through their limited API's.
Yeah, a new service that offers a larger selection for the same price, and will be preinstalled to the majority of their customers phones, and free for 3 months will sure be a great cause for celebration...
>The reason I loved my iPod is because I didn't have to listen to the radio.
And one reason iPod et al. got boring and people turned to places like Spotify is because it's not radio (that is, it's not a shared social experience). That's why stuff like Spotify playlists (curated music) got hundreds of thousands of subscribers. And DJs haven't died, they just took it outside radio, and into arenas, because modern radio has both annoying ads and marketing-oriented programming, something that this announcement is not meant to share.
If done right it could be big, and things can come and go in circles. Heck, there are millions of hipster kids out there buying vinyl, which wasn't even in fashion when they were born.
Regardless, the marketing behind it was atrocious, relative to standard Apple marketing. The entire "one last thing" of the keynote was, in a word, cringeworthy.
The only reason I listen to Spotify is because there is no decent alternative with a sufficient catalog. Like many, I've been dying for a better alternative.
I don't know if Apple Music will be it, but I do remember what the iPod and iTunes did to the MP3 player.
This can change if there's a enticing offering. Ads, endless automated playlists and crappy programming are not very interesting even for older people. But someone with a unique radio program can potentially get a large following -- like EDM DJs have.
>Second, it's technically not that impressive.
A social service is not about the technology anyway.
>But most importantly: music is very divisive and tastes differ greatly.
That's rather a problem with endless fragmentation than something nice and desirable. Music can also be a uniting force -- and in the past it was, with people able to listen to many genres, not just celebrate their small corner of the music world.
Furthermore, they're not competing with existing radio, but rather with things like Pandora's part-human algorithms and Spotify's many human-curated playlist. As well as the thousands of radio stations that broadcast online.
> That's rather a problem with endless fragmentation than something nice and desirable. Music can also be a uniting force -- and in the past it was, with people able to listen to many genres, not just celebrate their small corner of the music world.
I'd say people moved primarily to non-radio alternatives (big music libraries on devices, spotify/pandora/etc.) because they preferred them, and they finally could do so conveniently. This same phenomenon can be seen in the move away from tv toward on-demand select-your-preference solutions like Netflix (or online streaming via Popcorn time or certain websites).
Or to turn it around: I've never heard anyone complain that they wished they didn't have to 'celebrate their small corner of the music world' and would rather move back to single sources of music if not for the advertising and programming. People love their little corners because it is part of their identity.
It would make no sense for people to be excited about a radio station before it launches outside of the DJ's previous audience. There is nothing to hook people in yet. I personally listen to the CBC news on the radio everyday and if Apple launched a news station... who knows. It's not really an area that any other big tech companies are competing in. Sports radio is great if you are a sports fan, maybe they'll expand to that. Other talk radio as well, people love it and live call in shows with a "community" of listeners is still a concept best served in radio.
Commercial radio is terrible because it doesn't make a revenue like it used to. I think people dismiss it more so due to it's low quality than the fact that they can curate their own music now. Playing your own music in your car isn't a new concept.
Wild guess, but maybe radio is part of a long term vehicle plan. Broadcast radio is a significant part of the vehicle user experience. Highest radio ratings during a weekday are 7:45AM.
Also, it's not like running an internet radio station is very expensive anyways. Apple can afford it.
Anyways... No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
A radio station? No time shifting? People replaced their radios with Walkmen and iPods for a reason...
And "Connect" just sounds like Ping 2.0.
"We're basically cloning the entire feature set of Spotify and integrating that into our existing services" is bigger than you give it credit for.
I just say 'Hey Siri play XYZ' on my watch and the music plays on my car stereo.
I did find it funny when Iovine said "revolutionary" though, and a few in the crowd seemed to chuckle/laugh, and he appeared a bit confused.
These presenters didn't fit the usual model. They acted like hadn't rehearsed much (Iovine in particular). It was wildly unclear what, exactly, they were talking about. Lots of abstract hand-waving instead of keeping things concrete and clear.
I'm mystified how this happened.
iTunes Radio, Apple's first attempt in this space, is awful. X skips per hour? Really? The story went that Apple's execs actually had no idea how Spotify worked so thought they really had something.
It's the kind of fiasco that would've earned the execs a bollicking in the Jobs days and, to me, the buck had to stop at Tim Cook.
I'm a paid Spotify subscriber. Generally I like it but it has its warts:
- They did an app update a few months ago that's viewed as pretty much universally awful for reasons I can't really explain;
- Their catalog has many holes (eg Australian music, in this case probably because Spotify doesn't have an Australian service);
- I used to think artists were being Luddites by opting out but there's actually good reason for this. They don't earn royalties proportional to the actual plays. The royalty scheme imposed by the record companies gives a disproportionate amount to currently popular artists;
- Because of the last point you have artists who are missing or, in some cases, you have all their songs except their 1-2 money makers;
- Worse, for some songs, particularly for things from the 70s for some reason, you can't get the original. You just get some shitty remaster that sounds like bad karaoke.
- Spotify's radio feature is the real weak point for me. Repeats (sometimes with only a song in between) and the thumbing up and down I don't think really has the desired effect. Like I might be on a good string of songs but I know the worst thing I can do is thumb anything up OR down as experience has taught me this can only make things worse.
Really "thumbs up" should probably mean "don't change anything". Or at least me listening to something in full is itself is a positive indicator.
That being said, I'm not really sure you can do satisfying recommendations here. So much of music is I think tied to memory and nostalgia. You might like a particular song because of a particular person, place, time or event. How does liking that inform any other music choice?
At the same time your radio playlist has to be large enough not to be too repetitive.
What's more, there's actually an art to playlist selection. It's why, for example, at a concert you'll generally see a band start with something upbeat, play anything a bit more mellow in the middle and finish on a high note.
Curated playlists (which I guess Apple is calling "guest DJs" because that's what it amounts to) is an idea with some history (eg Songza, bought by Google last year I think).
I actually find myself listening to iHeartRadio a lot. I pick a music style I'm in the mood for and just try different stations until I find something not too objectionable. Sure there are DJs (99% irritating) and some ads but at least I don't need to build a playlist, worry about what's on Spotify and what isn't or make a decision each song about whether to thumb it up or down. It's it or nothing (well... something else).
Radio really has a low cognitive cost.
They'd do well to add a web client and/or a native Linux client to that list, but the aforementioned platforms covers almost all users I'd guess.
Aside from that, I really have expected thought changes more than anything from Apple WWDC and this one is just disappointing.
Apple Music should help out with this.
But that looong, rambling explanation of every little feature, punctuated by clips from hip-but-safe artists, was entirely too much show for it.
If you just want background music, try Radio Coast.[1]. This is a successful streaming music project which annoys the RIAA because it doesn't have to pay royalties. Years ago Seeburg, the jukebox manufacturer, offered a background music service, using a special record changer which played 1000 songs over and over. The music was recorded by their own in-house musicians, so they didn't have to pay the RIAA. They never copyrighted the records, which you had to do back then to get copyright protection. Instead, they used a primitive form of DRM - the speed, record size, groove width, and hole size are all nonstandard.
All those records have been converted to files, and there's a streaming site. Hundreds of hours of 1950s elevator music.
[1] http://radiocoast.com/
Personally, that would be a big deciding factor, as I don't want/can't run iTunes.
The format itself is great - NTS radio has been doing similar stuff for years, independent from ad money or any other influences, just the taste of the respective show host. Apple however? They have to appeal, in general, to everyone and you can't have it both ways - it's either deep, niche and interesting to a small crowd...or very wide and superficial.
Playlists: The suggestions coming from their playlists, don't sound more interesting than what rdio and probably every other streaming service (I don't use Spotify, can't compare) is doing - we saw Bruce Springsteen and "Big Rock" as automated playlists in the demo - not the hardest usecase I imagine. I'm less confident when it comes to obscure jazz fusion krautrock crossovers from the early 1970s. In that case you'll probably have to get your hands dirty yourself, with countless open tabs just like it has been for years. Not that I'm complaining, I enjoy going down those rabbit holes.
Why can't they can do 'shows' like regular radio catering to different tastes?
http://mashable.com/2015/06/08/daniel-ek-spotify-ceos-apple-...
The receiver itself plays the music directly rather than being streamed from the device I started playing on. Nifty.