To promote the launch of a new Beats Pill model, Apple’s Oliver Schusser was interviewed by Craig McLean of Wallpaper — where by “interviewed” I mostly mean “guided through talking points”. There is not much here unless you appreciate people discussing brands in the abstract.
However, McLean wanted to follow up on a question asked of Schusser in a 2019 issue of Music Week (PDF): “where do you want to see, or want Apple Music to be, in five years?” Schusser replied:
We want to be the best in what we do. And that means, obviously, we’ll continue to invest in the product and make sure we’re innovative and provide our customers with the best experience. We want to invest in our editorial and content, in our relationships with the industry, whether that’s the songwriters, music publishers, the labels, artists or anyone in the creative process. But that’s really what we’re trying to do. We just want to be the best at what we do.
With McLean given the opportunity for a response at the end of that timeframe, where does Apple Music now find itself? Schusser answered:
We are very clearly positioned as the quality service. We don’t have a free offer [unlike Spotify’s advertising-supported tier]. We don’t give anything away. Everything is made by music fans and curated by experts. We are focused on music while other people are running away from music into podcasts and audiobooks. Our service is clearly dedicated to music.
With spatial audio, we’ve completely revolutionised the listening experience. [Historically] we went from mono to stereo and then, for decades, there was nothing else. Then we completely invented a new standard [where] now 90 per cent of our subscribers are listening to music in spatial audio. Which is great.
And little things, like the lyrics, for example, [which] you find on Apple Music, which are incredibly popular. We have a team of people that are actually transcribing the lyrics because we don’t want them to be crowd-sourced from the internet. We want to make sure they’re as pristine as possible. We’ve got motion artwork and song credits. We really try to make Apple Music a high quality place for music fans.
And while most others in the marketplace have sort of stopped innovating, we’ve been really pushing hard, whether it’s Apple Music Sing, which is a great singalong feature, like karaoke. Or Classical, which is an audience that had completely been neglected. We’re trying to make Apple Music the best place for people to listen to music. I’m super happy with that.
This is quite the answer, and one worth tediously picking apart claim-by-claim.
We are very clearly positioned as the quality service. We don’t have a free offer [unlike Spotify’s advertising-supported tier]. We don’t give anything away.
I am not sure how one would measure whether Apple Music is “positioned as the quality service”, but this is a fair point. Apple Music offers free streaming “Radio” stations, but it is substantially not a free service.
Everything is made by music fans and curated by experts.
This is a common line from Apple and a description which has carried on from the launch of Beats Music. But it seems only partially true. There are, for example, things which must be entirely made by algorithm, like user-personalized playlists and radio stations. Schusser provided more detail to McLean five years ago in that Music Week interview, saying “[o]f course there are algorithms involved [but] the algorithms only pick music that [our] editors and curators would choose”. I do not know what that means, but it is at least an acknowledgement of an automated system instead of the handmade impression Apple gives in the Wallpaper interview.
Other parts of Apple Music suspiciously seem informed by factors beyond what an expert curator might decide. Spellling’s 2021 record “The Turning Wheel”, a masterpiece of orchestral art pop, notably received a perfect score from music reviewer Anthony Fantano. Fantano also gave high scores to artists like Black Midi, JPEGMAFIA, and Lingua Ignota, none of whom make music anything like Spellling. Yet all are listed as “similar artists” to Spellling on Apple Music. If you like Spellling’s work, you may be surprised by those other artists because they sound wildly different. This speaks less of curation than it does automation by audience.
For the parts which are actually curated manually, do I know the people who are making these decisions? What is their taste like? What are their standards? Are they just following Apple’s suggestions? Why is the “Rock Drive” playlist the same as any mediocre FM rock radio station?
We are focused on music while other people are running away from music into podcasts and audiobooks. Our service is clearly dedicated to music.
Music has undeniably shaped Apple from its earliest days and, especially, following the launch of the iPod. Its executives are fond of repeating the line “we love music” in press releases and presentations since 2001. But Apple’s dedication to separating music from other media is a five year old decision. It was previously wholly dedicated to music while shipping an app that also played audiobooks and podcasts and movies and all manner of other things. Plus, have you seen the state of the Music app on MacOS?
This is clearly just a dig at Spotify. It would carry more weight if Apple Music felt particularly good for music playback. It does not. I have filed dozens of bugs against the MacOS, iOS, and tvOS versions reflecting basic functionality: blank screens, poor search results, playback queue ordering issues, inconsistencies in playlist sort order between devices, problems with importing files, sync issues, cloud problems, and so forth. It is not uniformly terrible, but this is not a solid foundation for criticizing Spotify for not focusing on music enough.
Spotify sucks in other ways.
With spatial audio, we’ve completely revolutionised the listening experience. [Historically] we went from mono to stereo and then, for decades, there was nothing else.
This is untrue. People have been experimenting with multichannel audio in music since the 1960s. “Dark Side of the Moon” was released in quadrophonic audio in 1973, one of many albums released that decade in a four-channel mix. In the 1990s, a bunch of albums were released on SACDs mixed in 5.1 surround sound.
What Apple can correctly argue is that few people actually listened to any multichannel music in these formats. They were niche. Now?
Then we completely invented a new standard [where] now 90 per cent of our subscribers are listening to music in spatial audio. Which is great.
A fair point, though with a couple of caveats. Part of the high adoption rate is because Spatial Audio is turned on by default, and Apple is paying a premium to incentivize artists to release multichannel mixes. It is therefore not too surprising that most people have listened to at least one Spatial Audio track.
But this is the first time I can remember Apple claiming it “invented” the format. Spatial Audio was originally framed as supporting music mixed in Dolby Atmos. In its truest guise — played through a set of AirPods or Beats headphones, which can track the movement of the wearer’s head — it forms a three-dimensional bubble of music, something which Apple did create. That is, Apple invented the part which makes Atmos-mixed audio playable on its systems within a more immersive apparent space. But Apple did not invent the “new standard” taking music beyond two channels — that was done long before, and then by Dolby.
Also, it is still bizarre to me how many of the most popular multichannel mixes of popular albums are not available in Spatial Audio on Apple Music. These are records the artists deliberately intended for a surround sound mix at the time they were released, yet they cannot be played in what must be the most successful multichannel music venue ever made? Meanwhile, a whole bunch of classic songs and albums have been remixed in Spatial Audio for no good reason.
And little things, like the lyrics, for example, [which] you find on Apple Music, which are incredibly popular. We have a team of people that are actually transcribing the lyrics because we don’t want them to be crowd-sourced from the internet. We want to make sure they’re as pristine as possible.
I really like the way Apple Music displays time-tracked lyrics. That said, I only occasionally see inaccuracies in lyrics on Genius and in Apple Music, so I am not sure how much more “pristine” Apple’s are.
Also, I question the implication of a team of people manually transcribing lyrics. I have nothing to support this, but I would wager heavily this is primarily machine-derived followed by manual cleanup.
We’ve got motion artwork and song credits.
Song credits are good. Motion artwork is a doodad.
We really try to make Apple Music a high quality place for music fans.
I want to believe this is true, but I have a hard time accepting today’s Apple Music is the high quality experience worth raving about. Maybe some music fans are clamouring for animated artwork and bastardized Spatial Audio mixes of classic albums. I am not one of them. What I want is foundation of a reliable and fast jukebox functionality extended to my local library and streaming media, and then all this exciting stuff built on top.
And while most others in the marketplace have sort of stopped innovating, we’ve been really pushing hard, whether it’s Apple Music Sing, which is a great singalong feature, like karaoke. Or Classical, which is an audience that had completely been neglected.
These are good updates. Apple has not said much about Apple Music Sing or its popularity since it launched in December 2022, but it seems fine enough. Also, Spotify began trialling its own karaoke mode in June 2022, so maybe it should be credited with this innovation.
Apple Music Classical, meanwhile, remains a good but occasionally frustrating app. Schusser is right in saying this has been a neglected audience among mainstream streaming services. Apple’s effort is built upon Primephonic, which it acquired in August 2021 before launching it re-skinned as Classical in March 2023. That said, it is better now than it was at launch and it seems Apple is slowly refining it. It is important to me for there to be mainstream attention in this area.
We’re trying to make Apple Music the best place for people to listen to music. I’m super happy with that.
The thing I keep thinking about the four paragraph response above is that Schusser says a lot of the right things. Music is so important to so many people, and I would like to believe Apple cares as much about making the best music service and players as I do about listening to each week’s new releases.
I just wish everything was better than it currently is. There are many bugs I filed years ago which remain open, though I am happy to say the version in the latest Sequoia beta appears to contain a fix for reversing the order of songs when dragging them to the playback queue. If Apple really wants to position Apple Music as “the quality service” that is “the best at what we do”, it should demonstrate that instead of just saying it.