Business News Digital

Significant Apple Music revamp in the pipeline ahead of first anniversary

By | Published on Thursday 5 May 2016

Apple Music

Apple is planning a significant overhaul of its streaming music service as the set-up approaches its first birthday, with plans to unveil a string of changes at the tech giant’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. This according to sources who have spoken to Bloomberg.

Apple execs – chiefly VP of iTunes International Oliver Schusser – previously admitted just a few months after Apple Music launched last summer that there was still a lot of work to do to make the streaming service truly magnificent, the much hyped app having received mixed reviews around launch.

Of course, the Apple streaming do dah entered the market very much in the spotlight, whereas most start-up services have had time to evolve, with just the real early-adopters on board, before becoming subject to widespread scrutiny. Though Apple Music was basically a rework of Beats Music. Which was basically a rework of MOG. So Apple wasn’t entirely starting from scratch.

Bloomberg’s sources reckon that the revamp will set out to make the Apple Music application more user-friendly, and to better integrate the iTunes and Apple Music services, for those who continue to use the app to mainly buy and play downloads rather than subscribe and stream. The more-hype-than-listeners Beats 1 radio channel will also likely get its Beats 2 and 3 sister stations.

The Bloomberg story reckons that, aside from the challenge of putting a new music service live amid such incredible hype last year, Apple Music also suffered from a culture clash between the core Apple team and the music industry expertise that came to the company via its mega-bucks acquisition of the aforementioned Beats.

Though the revamp also has reps from both sides of that deal in leadership positions, Apple’s Robert Kondrk and Beats’ chief creative man, ie Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, spearheading the project under Apple’s Eddy Cue and one-time Beats supremo Jimmy Iovine.

It remains to be seen just how different Apple Music v2 really is, and whether it enjoys more universal praise than v1. Though it is worth remembering that, despite Bloomberg saying that it was the Apple/Beats culture clash that “created a product that many critics say doesn’t meet Apple’s own lofty standards”, Apple’s software products rarely operate at the same standard as the tech firm’s hardware and operating systems.

The reported Apple Music revamp follows that recent financial report from the IT giant that revealed the first dip in overall revenues since 2003, but a rise in income from service products, suggesting that platforms like the streaming music app are becoming more key to the Apple Inc business, rather than being just add-ons to upsell devices.

Quite how successful Apple Music has been in terms of signing up users and driving new revenue is of debate. In the context of the streaming music market, the thirteen million sign ups so far is damn impressive. Though in the context of the Apple userbase – and the reach of the existing iTunes platform – possibly less so.

Bloomberg quote New York-based analyst Colin Gillis as saying “Apple Music is underwhelming”, adding that he reckons the company should have converted more former iTunes downloaders to the streaming business by now.

Whether or not you set the same ambitious targets for Apple’s streaming service – and at least a few in the music industry did prior its launch – it will be interesting to see if all-new Apple Music is [a] less shit and [b] delivers the shit.



READ MORE ABOUT: |