Apple Music is so new, so multi-faceted and so potentially reshaping of our business that we currently have a lot more questions to ask than conclusions drawn, David Balfour comments.

03 July 2015 - Editorial

We’re excited because this is a really important new service which utterly reshapes one of the single most significant revenue streams for artists and labels. Excited because it is radically new, not just a tweaking of the iTunes status quo. We’re excited because this really does feel like a music service, where tracks aren’t just content but part of a wider musical dialogue – one where the human touch is unmistakable. The playlists are rich and sometimes refreshingly niche and artist-focused. The way that Apple Music integrates and combines our existing MP3 collection and store purchases within its new streaming model is also exciting – it’s easily the best implementation of that idea that we’ve seen from any service so far. We’re also excited by Beats 1 because, let’s face it, how often do we get an expertly-curated new media outlet serving over 100 countries where music is the absolute focus of the platform? Some commentators are already being sniffy about the station but we’re not amongst them. We’re all going to take some time understanding the Beats 1 strategy, scheduling and feel but right now it feels pretty good to us. Imagine just how good it must feel if you’re from a part of the world that isn’t accustomed to excellent BBC Radio programming? It’s hard not to enjoy from a listener’s perspective, from a label perspective it’s a hugely powerful new platform for exposing music, one which looks like it will be open to a full range and breadth of styles and genres and which isn’t ultimately all about selling advertising.

Next, we come to the confusing. I should preface this by saying that I’m personally approaching this service from an inherently disadvantaged place. As a committed Android user I’m currently locked out of the mobile experience. ‘Mobile first’ is perhaps the No. 1 mantra of the modern technology company, one which has clearly been a guiding principal in the building out of Apple Music. Apparently Apple Music works pretty well on iOS devices. Desktop and laptop users are unlikely to be reporting so positively.

Apple is a first and foremost a technology hardware company, so it’s no surprise that their strategy supports iOS, looks great on Apple mobile devices and chooses to entirely exclude Android users at this point. But, it disappoints that desktop users seem to have been treated as an afterthought, so far. Which is perhaps a long-winded way of saying that we’ve found the Apple Music experience confusing and buggy to an extent that isn’t perhaps felt on iOS. Nevertheless, there are problems, some which effect on PC but several which also fail on Mac. Why, for instance, when we’re listening to a track on Beats 1 and we click ‘Show in iTunes store’, does it take us to a generic Beats 1 landing page and not to the artist or track in question?  (To be fair, this apparent bug doesn’t affect the other radio streams on the radio tab). We could list a string of things like this, but perhaps it would be to miss the point – this is a service aimed primarily at iOS users, designed to support Apple’s core hardware business, and where Apple is understandably focused on its core user base first. Yet, if this is also a service which also ultimately aims to address the widest mass market, in musical appeal and potential reach terms, it’s current flaws are going to disappoint a significant chunk of users right now.

Given that Apple Music is only just fresh out of box, we shouldn’t dwell too much on these points. There are some further points of more significant confusion however. What is Connect, exactly? Where’s the integration with the wider social media landscape which we were expecting to see? Is this service effectively locked into Apple music, and arguably therefore just another stab at Ping? Connect is perhaps the aspect which underwhelms us most so far and its appeal isn’t helped by the way it appears to auto opt-in to a bunch of artists we’d never actively choose to follow. It’s clear that Connect will only reach its real potential when a full range of artists are signed up, something which was hard to achieve pre-launch. Yet, as NYTimes already commented, this tool is undoubtedly the weakest-looking aspect of the service so far. Will artists and marketers invest time in Connect when there are already so many other outlets to feed? In its current shape, it looks doubtful.

We’d be the first to admit that we haven’t even nearly got our heads properly around the Apple Music platform yet. It’s logical that something so multi-faceted will take time to become accustomed to. Bugs will get fixed, and we’ll no doubt learn in time that some of those ‘bugs’ were actually our own inexperience. But, there are some aspects of Apple Music which seem to be built into the service which we do find disappointing. We’re surprised at how weak the call to upsell downloads is on the service. The ability to purchase content isn’t just subtle, it’s all but hidden. This surprises us. Anyone would admit that streaming is the future dominant model, but aspects of the design would suggest that Apple really doesn’t care about preserving its downloads business. Even where streamed albums are available in Mastered for iTunes format, or contained greyed-out tracks available for purchase only (as is the case on Taylor Swift’s 1989), the purchase opportunity could hardly be more hidden.

The seemingly wholescale separation between the iTunes Music Store and Apple Music presents some important questions about how labels should look to promote artists and releases to Apple. It also strengthens the prospect of an immediate and cataclysmic decline in a la carte sales from iTunes. Should we perhaps avoid the temptation to separate downloads and streaming in our minds, and in our promotional strategies? Maybe so. In some ways it’s refreshing to have to think of an album as an album, rather than the format it’s carried on. If however, the download format is likely to be devalued to such a deep extent as the store’s architecture might suggest, it raises real questions about the actual products we choose to supply to market in future.

The other great unknown for artists and labels at this point is, how they can hope to achieve the best possible chances of getting our releases featured in curated playlists and radio streams? Will we see a new dynamic where track-based editorial selection forces a new approach to promotion and release strategy? Will access to the huge promotional window of Beats 1 be something that’s even realistically pluggable? Will we be able to measure the impact of different kinds of uses within the Apple Music ecosystem and adapt our promotional and release strategies accordingly? Apple’s historical focus on providing great data tools and insights would suggest that we will have access to rich data. Nevertheless, whatever Apple provides, we will all have a lot of work to do to achieve a balanced feeling for this new platform and the undoubtedly great opportunities it can provide for promoting and monetising music.