Apple announces Apple Music radio
apple.com
apple.com
Kind of astonished it's quietly been on air for so long, and I wonder if the rebranding means they're actually going to revitalize it in some way or if this is just going to lead to them quietly dropping the more interesting aspects of it.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-13/apple-rea...
I've subscribed to Apple Music since the start, but apart from a massive catalog, I can't help but feel that it is a neglected product.
Apple put Jimmy Iovine in charge of that business, presumably because the company needed industry legitimacy and the connections he had.
However, I do not think Iovine or his lieutenants were music "fans", which are people who for personal reasons intentionally seek out new artists, listen to them and share their picks with friends.
I think this lack of familiarity with the customer and how to connect with them through mobile software products led to the state it is in now.
What is strange to me is that Apple Music as an application has not improved. The views do not pre-cache, so they are the slowest loading of any app on my iPhone. Apple Music often fails to perform searches properly.
Despite the volume of data Apple had from my music preferences _before_ Apple Music existed, the recommendation engine is still no good, and the music curation lacks any semblance of personality.
When I ask Siri to play a song, it sometimes feels like Apple Music tries to play a version of the song that has a lower licensing fee than the one I'm actually after. This is total conjecture, but I would not be surprised.
That Spotify has done as well as it has is more a credit to the failure of Apple Music to materialize into something at all representing the vast beauty and detail of music.
I occasionally have tuned into Beats 1, especially if there was an artist interview I wanted to hear. But I really did not like the vibe of Zane Lowe. I felt like he was always fawning over the artists and he interrupts them while they're talking.
Hopefully, these minor radio changes are indicative of a larger changes coming to the Apple Music product as a whole.
Here's the schedule for all three: https://imgur.com/gallery/3FW3u3k
Presumably some of the various celebrity shows are going to move to the two new stations, while others will stay.
...and that's where you lost me.
Global radio doesn't work. Hundreds of companies and thousands of people have tried it, and it's never worked. People are different all over, they're not the same, so they don't all want the same thing.
I stopped listening to the BBC World Service when it stopped being about Britain and started being "The world's radio station™," because it just got boring and repetitive.
"Centralcasting" is what almost killed radio in America the 1990's. Jacor/Clear Channel ate hundreds of stations across the country and had a computer in Kentucky decide what music should be played for an entire nation. It didn't work. People flocked to iPods and streaming to get away from the homogeny. Those stations that kept true to their local content survived, and some thrived.
Even Sirius learned this with its satellite radio stations, and the DJs no longer pretend to be some monolithic continental presence in the sky, and instead talk about wherever they're broadcasting from, and some even bend the playlist to match their geography, so it changes through the day as they switch from a host in Detroit to one in Boston to one in DC to one in L.A. When I was in broadcasting it was called a POD — Point Of Difference. Why can DJ A give me that DJ B can't?
KCSN/Northidge and WXRT/Chicago are both AAA radio stations, but they don't play the same songs. They're tailored to what their LOCAL audiences like. That's a good thing. Apple Global Mega Huge Music One has no local audience, and zero feedback other than a subscriber count.
When I listen to a pop station in London, I hear different music than when I listen to a pop station in Los Angeles or Melbourne. That's good. I listen to music from stations all over the world, and in genres I don't ordinarily like, simply because I enjoy the discovery of new songs and artists that I never heard of.
Apple has enough money to keep this online for a very long time, even if no one listens. But why? Who is it good for? Aside from a branding exercise, or trying to give one more checkmark for its bundled services package, what's the point?
I think you're letting you biases show. I've heard country music on radio stations from Germany to Japan to Mexico. There are even country music artists from Europe that show up on American radio stations.
I think Apple has enough data and enough smart people looking at that data to know what genres to pick.
This will be interesting to watch—variations in music scenes around the world have made music rich and diverse, but most artists now (at least attempt to) launch to a global audience. In this new scenario, the diversity I think pulls from being able to gain traction without going through the traditional gatekeepers. There's also a lot more interesting fusion happening as artists are exposed to so many other artists worldwide.
I do agree with your larger point that centralcasting can make for boring playlists, so this product isn't for me. But I've also found that there are people who don't want to do all the effort of discovery and curation of their music—they just want to hit play and have a soundtrack for the day going. This feels like Apple trying to solve for that use case.
I'm not sure what "Texas" music is, even though I lived there for many years.
Maybe you're interested in listening to rap music. Rap music on radio stations in Houston isn't the same playlist as rap music on a radio station in New York, or Paris.
Rap is actually a great example of this, because rap is very geographic. Montreal, Paris, and even London have rap music that is vastly different from rap music in New York or Los Angeles or, again, Houston.
What Apple could/should do is make regional flavors of its stations, rather than going for this "global" cliche. Then people from different places could learn about music from other places, even if it's the same genre.
But you are not in mood for egyptian music either, so there is definitely some correlation between your location and type of music you like.
You are right, but right about the wrong thing.
A few weeks ago there was a submission here on HN about a site that shows a world map with the locations of radio stations with internet streams marked, and plays one at random from a circle around the center of the map.
I spent quite a while going all over the world at random listening to what their stations were playing.
Yes, I heard a vast difference between pop stations in the United States and pop stations in Australia and pop stations in England. I heard a vast difference between pop stations in different states in the US, too.
But I also heard a lot of similarity. No matter if I was listening to random stations in Russia, or South Korea, or Nigeria, or New Zealand, or various states in the United States, I heard a lot of the same artists.
So yes, people don't all want the same thing. But it seems that in most places there are enough people who do like the same thing enough to want to listen to it along with the things that are more specific to their region.
That's all that Apple needs to get listeners. They won't become the only station for many people, but they could easily become a station that many people around the world do regularly listen to in addition to stations that focus on their regional music.
We appreciate their culture and it gives us a sense of home no matter where we are.
Beats1's main schedule centers around three shows, broadcasting from Los Angeles, New York, and London. Those are the primary markets for which they're aiming, and the music each of the three main DJs plays is different. American and British movies and television tend to play well around the world, and I'm not sure radio is that much different.
Is Beats1 the best radio station for local Tunisian listeners? Is it ever going to be the #1 station in Morocco? Probably not, but many people (especially young people?) in nearly every area of the world consume a lot of western content, presumably enough to keep Apple happy.
I mean, if you're saying you want a radio station that takes chances and plays music you like without repeating the same top 40 hits endlessly, I'm with you. I'm not sure the geography plays as much of a role as you think it does, though. In theory a station could broadcast worldwide and still take chances and avoid repetition.
TL;DR: ClearChannel doesn't suck because they own stations in every US market. They suck because they suck, and it's unfortunate that they own channels in every market because that means it's hard to escape their suck.
It clearly fits into the Music product better but even after the corporate takeover there was something cool about "Beats" as a brand. It even sounded good in the stings. Oddly this is currently in Music as "Apple Music Beats 1" next to Hits and Country, which is even worse than one or the other.
The visual branding of all three stations is amateur too. Quite clearly so next to the Beats branding.
I wonder what the real success of the station has been - it seems to have all the right ingredients even if I'm not that interested after Julie left. It's always seemed a little discard by Apple, as it often is with these big tech companies and their side projects. If this was a business in its own right, as with Apple Music, I assume there'd be more publicity and a more competitive product.
My impression is post-acquisiton Apple figured their brand would be sufficient to differentiate them, so they kind of stopped caring about the very high-touch work involved in curated radio. I think at this point it makes sense to view Apple Music as "commodity music streaming but it's apple, so it's preloaded, etc."
I just switched back to iOS about a year ago and I haven't seen an ad for it in the app store or had it recommended for any of the music players I've test driven since I switched back.
I'm not sure if that's just bad marketing or is it Apple not pushing its own products in the app store?
Apple Music users are getting... 2 whole new stations. That's it. Oh, and a rebrand.
If this is supposed to be a big marketing push, they are doing a good job at encouraging me to stay on Spotify.
Apple has a large selection of songs it can pull from to know what I do and do not like, and could easily recommend things for me. The last time I checked out the recommendations, they were awful. Spotify? Spot on. =) Also, Spotify is just available everywhere I want it. Apple? Pretty much "Apple brand" or nothing. Apple is not the end-all of my universe. I'm sure Apple Music is fine if you ONLY use Apple products or listen via Apple approved products, but no one I know does that. Not even the iOS developers I know.
Anyways, even if you are a fan, you have to admit their offering is pretty lame.
The only reason I use Spotify is sharing playlists with friends or on social media, which is something Apple Music recently added, but isn’t widely used. I will admit that Spotify has nailed The music sharing UX.
A full screen ad. For Apple Music. The app I'm in.
Edit: And I want to make sure I'm clear here. I pay for iTunes Match. I have a nice music library, and it's in iTunes, so I like having it with me where I go when I want to listen to something from that. So, I'm in Apple Music, trying to play music I own. And it's synced through a service I've already paid for. And Apple has the audacity to ask for more money? Stop me from playing my music after I've already paid them and deal with an annoying full-screen popup Ad.
Opened Spotify, and is synced up with what my Desktop is doing.
It's fine you disagree. It's just Apple has done everything they can to make me hate using Music.
You're not paying for Apple Music. Apple Music costs the exact same price as Spotify Premium: $10 a month, or $15 for a family.
You're paying for iTunes match which is an annual fee of $25 that lets you play your CD-ripped library anywhere without transferring the files. Go to your Library, play your music, relax, this is what you paid for.
To suggest that somehow you're entitled to free Apple Music because you pay an annual fee of a separate product, is disingenuous.
Apple has their "For You" tab, but it's not as streamlined and the recommendations have been much more hit or miss.
Maybe it needs some more time to figure out my music tastes.
Where Spotify really did a good job was just having artists create curated playlists that you can take. I'm amazed Apple doesn't do this more. They have "Inspirations" playlists that are kind of stuff that influenced a specific hit album, but they're clearly curated by someone at Apple.
I guess what I'm asking for is for them to recreate Ping, but make it good this time. Haha
But I don't let Apple Music run with streams, really. I stick to my own selections. So YMMV
I don't often stream, though. I will when I'm working—usually via Apple Music web (I'll give you the web interface there, but it is fairly new) or Youtube (can get annoying).
Apple Music on my phone has been great, though. Probably the thing I like most is that it blends the downloaded albums from the streaming service with my existing library. I don't have enough experience with Spotify to know if that's possible with it as well.
Plus, if you take EDM/dance genre for instance. All the big shows/DJs play the same current hits. There are lots of less known tracks that come out that a DJ/show could break.
iOS I'm currently using 'radio.net' for a Shoutcast client, Android I use Radiodroid. Tons of stations across pretty much any genre. Lots of FM stations that simulcast on here as well.
Is there something I'm missing about Apple's service that doesn't even provide a way to play old shows? Are they trying to do live streaming as a creative way to skirt licensing costs (like how FM stations don't pay a penny to play songs). I seem to recall soma.fm and di.fm shoutcast stations trying to lobby and get fair licensing structures, and they still pay $$$ to keep their services up.
Some shows that were on-air are usually available as on-demand after the show.
If you are not looking for the exclusive shows or you want to avoid switching to a different apps it's probably not a product for you.
Although I remember some gossip about them buying it mainly for the music licensing deals that Beats had, and probably the recording industry clout of Dr. Dre.
Do we need to worry about podcasts?