“‘I don’t believe that what exists right now is enough.’ Jimmy Iovine, who runs Apple Music — originally Beats, the music service and electronics business that he and co-founder Dr. Dre sold to Apple for $3 billion in 2014 — is on a tear about the deficiencies of streaming services, including his own,” Hannah Karp reports for Billboard. “Sitting on a couch in his sunny office at Apple’s Los Angeles headquarters, he admits he wouldn’t be here if he weren’t ‘extremely’ optimistic: ‘I believe we’re in the right place, we have the right people and the right attitude to not settle for what exists right now.’ But ultimately? ‘Just because we’re adding millions of subscribers and the old catalog numbers are going up, that’s not the trick. That’s just not going to hold.'”
“Apple Music tells Billboard that it now counts well over 30 million paying subscribers, helping fuel a 17 percent revenue jump for the U.S. recorded-music business in the first half of 2017 over the same period a year ago, according to the RIAA,” Karp reports. “The veteran record executive — who got his start sweeping out recording studios, later produced hit records for acts from Bruce Springsteen to U2, and then co-founded Interscope Records, which he ran until 2014 — is working to crack what he sees as the music industry’s biggest challenge: how to inject enough ‘soul’ into subscription streaming services so that fans will pay $10 a month instead of listening to their tunes on free services, which are also growing fast.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 30+ million strong and growing!
SEE ALSO:
Apple Maps and Apple Music among the top 15 U.S. smartphone apps – July 24, 2017
Apple Music helps on-demand audio streaming to hit record high – July 10, 2017
Jimmy Iovine defends Apple Music’s paid-only model, claims free tier would have 400 million listeners by now – May 17, 2017