“Apple isn’t just gunning for Spotify with its new Apple Music streaming service,” Stuart Dredge reports for The Guardian. “It’s gunning for radio broadcasters. Its combination of live radio station Beats 1 and a range of non-live stations programmed by DJs aims to seduce listeners away from traditional radio, and then sell some of them a $9.99-a-month streaming subscription.”
What I saw in the record industry is it’s just getting more restricted, more restricted, more restricted to where everyone’s trying to figure out what kind of song to make to get on the radio, that’s researched and where advertisers are telling you what to play. What’s happened to the music industry, from my perspective, is a lot of great music is behind the wall that can’t get through, and therefore a lot of artists are getting discouraged. And we hope that this ecosystem really helps revive that… There’s got to be a win for everybody: there has to be a win for the consumer, a win for the artist, a win for the rightsholders. We wanted to give artists a place where there’s a rhyme and a reason: where there’s an ecosystem where it feeds off each other. Where there’s a payoff! And not just a financial payoff, but an emotional payoff. A creative payoff. — Apple’s Jimmy Iovine
“Wouldn’t Apple have liked to go cheaper?” Dredge asks Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “‘No. We always thought ‘$9.99 is the price of an album,’ so on a monthly basis that’s great. Where we put all our energy behind was the family plan,’ says Cue, referring to the $14.99 option that covers up to six people in a family”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: People should forget about the somewhat muddled keynote presentation of Apple Music and focus on what Apple’s new service offers. All of the features that Apple Music offers makes membership quite compelling at $9.99/month. And hundreds of millions of users will be experiencing every bit of Apple Music for free for three months starting very soon. Apple’s revolutionary Apple Music is going to be a very big deal!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
SEE ALSO:
Shark Tank’s O’Leary: Apple Music is a ‘giant nothing burger’ – June 9, 2015
Something about Apple Music betraying Apple’s brilliance by ignoring ‘The Harry Potter Theory of Marketing’ or some such nonsense – June 9, 2015
Bob Lefsetz on Apple Music: What team is Jimmy Iovine on? – June 9, 2015
Apple Music’s huge advantage over Spotify – June 9, 2015
Apple Music is a major mess and it won’t beat Spotify or something – June 9, 2015
When Apple Music arrives, what happens to iTunes Match? – June 9, 2015
What Apple Music says about how Apple views musicians – June 8, 2015
Apple’s revolutionary Apple Music just might prove its skeptics wrong – June 8, 2015
Apple unveils revolutionary Apple Music service – June 8, 2015