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Apple Wants To Turn Its Music App Into a One-Stop Shop For Pop Culture (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the music-app-in-2017 dept.

Jimmy Iovine, one of the heads of Apple Music, has long expressed desires to make Apple Music "an entire pop cultural experience." The company, he has previously said, will do so partly by including original video content into its music app. Now, in an interview with Bloomberg, he added that the company plans to include original shows and videos with high-profile partners such as director J.J. Abrams and rapper R. Kelly. Iovine adds, from the interview: A music service needs to be more than a bunch of songs and a few playlists. I'm trying to help Apple Music be an overall movement in popular culture, everything from unsigned bands to video. We have a lot of plans. We have the freedom, because it's Apple, to make one show, three shows, see what works, see what doesn't work until it feels good. The article also sheds light on Iovine's personality: Iovine fidgets when he talks. As his mind wanders, he takes his jacket off, then puts it back on. He frequently clutches his legs, contorting himself into a ball. He's a font of ideas with industry contacts to help execute every one of them. He turned to Pharrell Williams and Gwen Stefani for help picking the model for Beats headphones. Some ideas get Iovine into trouble. He's taken meetings with artists and made arrangements to release music without telling anyone in advance, frustrating colleagues. He's persuaded artists to release music exclusively with Apple, frustrating record labels.

25 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. bloat by bugs2squash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and the app shall grow until it consumes the world, like itunes does

    --
    Nullius in verba
    1. Re:bloat by cayenne8 · · Score: 1
      I hear ya.

      When I want a music player...I want a music player.

      When I want video or streaming, I used the appropriate app.

      I find with most things in life, the products that try to do all-in-one usually do none of them in a premium fashion.

      I find it is usually best to buy dedicated units for most things, that are each engineered to do one thing and do it right.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    2. Re:bloat by micahraleigh · · Score: 1

      more dancing on Steve Jobs' grave

    3. Re:bloat by ausekilis · · Score: 1

      Wait, he wasn't talking about iTunes? Does Apple have some other end-all-be-all media store/player that isn't iTunes?

      I thought they started down this movie/TV/media road some 15 years ago?

    4. Re:bloat by unixisc · · Score: 1

      I've stayed away from it. I have iTunes for only 1 reason: to get music videos I must have to play in my car, since my Lumia can't trick the car into thinking that it's an iPod. Otherwise, most of the almost 100 songs I've collected are mp4s downloaded directly from YouTube. And if I wanted a one stop shop, Vevo is the best - although somehow, the option of buying songs from there, available to download to any of your media, has disappeared

    5. Re:bloat by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

      It's the Music app on the iPhone and iPad. For the longest time it just played the music you had stored on your device. Then around iOS 8.3 they shoved in the their streaming music and made the app less user friendly. In iOS 9 they redesigned the app so it was a bit better but it still is missing things from before such as replacing the ratings with a heart. The ratings still exist in iTunes though. And if you want to change the volume or skip forward/backward you have to go from the mini-browser view into a full browser and then return back in order to see your songs. It's not very user friendly, especially if you are using it one-handed as I tend to do.

      They also made the same changes to their Podcast app (to be consistent I guess). I used to listen to a lot of songs that were podcast but stopped because I used the rating system to determine if I wanted to keep them or not or how to sort. But they got rid of the ratings in that app too.

      Ever since Iovine showed up at Apple things have been getting worse even faster. When Jobs was alive the interface was kept clean and usable. Every release it becomes less usable and if they are going to shove videos into the Music app I'm afraid to know what it's going to look like.

    6. Re:bloat by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 1

      I was thinking that too. iTunes is what Emacs looks at and thinks "that's just become way too bloated".

  2. Apple by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The company that used to make good computers.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
    1. Re:Apple by h4ck7h3p14n37 · · Score: 1

      It sounds like they want to be MTV for the Internet Age?

    2. Re:Apple by 101percent · · Score: 1

      Remember OS X?

    3. Re: Apple by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Remember Pepperidge Farm?

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    4. Re:Apple by MrMr · · Score: 1

      Has since evolved into my zero stop shop of choice.

  3. Shovel it to us by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Translated:

    iTunes. Now with "original" pop shite, as well as the third party pop shite we've been shovelling you. We have no idea what we are doing, so we'll just keep trying different shite out on you until we get it right. Plus, one of the Apple executives acts like a drug addict in withdrawal.

  4. Apple = the Gap by DogDude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Apple is about as culturally relevant as The Gap is a good place to find fashionable clothes. Both are bland and dumbed down for the idiot masses.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
    1. Re:Apple = the Gap by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      Not even close to being a valid comparison, since Canonical doesn't try to indulge in the rent-seeking "we wanna be the cultural gatekeeper" thing.

      This isn't about "my company's better than yours", and your attempt to cast it as such just marks you as a fanboi.

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    2. Re:Apple = the Gap by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      LCD FTW

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
    3. Re:Apple = the Gap by Archfeld · · Score: 1

      Was thinking more like Hot Topic or Old Navy but the Gap works as well. I've not used apple hardware since high school, when as the designated AV Geek I set up an Apple II in the library and reassured the librarian that the sounds coming out of the disk drive were normal. The rest of the computer lab was using Commodore 64's. I had a TRS-80 color at home, and my dad had a CPM machine from work that we played Zork on. I won't play in Apples walled garden so any music or 'pop culture' will be a mystery to me. Slackware, RH, Solaris, Windows, OS2, MVS, VM, DOS/VSE, I've played with and supported them all without needing or wanting to take a bite of the poison apple.

      --
      errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
  5. How? by thogard · · Score: 1

    You have to get me to stop cussing at the stupid app if you want me to have any respect for anything you do. Sorry but since the skinny guy died, Apple is just following the Apple ][e days without any innovation which will be followed by the impending stock crash followed by the takeover attempts to withdraw the cash and then Apple will be dead and gone forever. Or they could fix their stuff.

  6. Conflict of interest, as with iTunes by Bill+Hayden · · Score: 2

    Consumer: Can you please just make your program simply play my music?
    Apple: We're going to do much more than that! It will play and organize your music, sync your phone and ipod, apply iOS updates, manage Apple credentials, sell music, sell videos, sell apps, and install drivers and services. They said it wasn't possible, but in addition, we've made the interface simultaneously so spartan yet so confusing that just knowing how to use it at all will be a mark of pride.

    --
    Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
  7. Bottling the Potato Salad by puddingebola · · Score: 1

    I remember reading years ago that in the coming years, the world would transition from an industrial to an information economy. This would have drastic consequences for society. Real power didn't reside with the manufacturers of goods, it would reside with the creators of content, the creators of brands. That's why Sony bought Columbia pictures. The new age would be digital, and the electronics manufacturers needed potato salad to send through the magical digital pipes for us to consume. Now that day is here, and Apple would like to make the creators of potato salad exclusive to its devices and its brand. Not sure if this will ever work. I think the most potent argument against DRM is it doesn't work. In a world with YouTube, there will always be some way for people to consume the potato salad, even if Apple or whoever else would like to bottle it under their brand name. All the same, maybe this is a good long term strategy on their part to expand iTunes. My rambling incoherent thoughts end here.

  8. Walled Garden Failure by omnichad · · Score: 1

    Netflix is not the walled garden that Apple wants. They produce their own content, sure. But you can use it on virtually any device, provided that you accept the DRM. What plays Apple content? iTunes, iPhones, and Apple TV.

  9. Remember: by Gibgezr · · Score: 1

    It's not done until it can send/receive email.

  10. Font of ideas by CannonballHead · · Score: 1

    I've never seen the Ideas Font before. :)

  11. Rapper R. Kelly? by blackprint · · Score: 1

    Being around a thing does not make you that thing, just ask action star Seth Rogen, or chef Guy Fieri.

  12. lolapple by knope · · Score: 1

    fuck this, fuck that, and good night.