On Monday, Apple representative, Jimmy Lovine, announced their endeavor to reinvent the radio with the new Apple Music app. The announcement was made at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, and declared that this new app would be a combination of already existing streaming services with a retro finish. Apple has taken their $3 billion dollar investment in Beats Music, and is adding Beats1 in the efforts to centralize music culture.
The music industry has been diluted in recent due to the digital revolution. More and more individuals are able to make a wide array of sounds with the current technology at hand; so new genres and subcultures of music have come about. This has caused the music industry markets’ to become niche specific, and thus capture less of the market in total. Apple’s goal behind their streaming service is to reinvent a general popularity in music through curated playlists and channels with an element of human touch.
Apple has 800 million iTunes users, so the potential to capture a large portion of the market is huge. They are a little late to the streaming service scene, but they’ve been here before with the late development of their digital music player, iPod, and smartphone, iPhone. They managed to crush both categories, so it is possible that they do the same here.
According to a story from USA Today, the streaming subscription service industry represents $1 billion of a $15 billion music-sales pie. They plan to charge $10 a month for the app, and then the question becomes if weather or not their app will be different enough for users to switch from Spotify, Tidal, and Pandora.
The details of the app include a radio station featuring London DJ, Zane Lowe; a curated music playlist based on your personal listening habits; and “Connect,” which is a form for musicians to connect to their fans with their new music.
