Billboard Interviews the Executive Team Behind Apple Music ⇥ billboard.com

Shirley Halperin of Billboard interviewed Eddy Cue, Jimmy Iovine, Robert Kondrk, and Trent Reznor in the wake of Apple Music’s refresh previewed yesterday. It’s a good — albeit light and PR-friendly — interview, touching on the things the team has learned in the first year of Apple Music’s availability. Most notably, it was confusing:

Reznor: I think you’ve seen the DNA of me in what we’ve shown [at WWDC] and the concepts behind what we released a year ago. It’s been really interesting for me to see how this works and how much time and patience it takes. The update of Apple Music is a result of us taking a hard look at how people actually use it — not hypothetically, but realistically.

The theme of this year’s WWDC seems to be: Pragmatic changes that, individually, are not that significant, but when used every day, greatly improve the way people use their devices in the real world.

I think the first release of Apple Music was centred around hopes on how people should use it. This update is decidedly pragmatic. It’s less idealized, more practical, and should prove far easier to use no matter how you use the Music app on your phone.