‘Carpool Karaoke' comes to Apple Music
“How many people have watched the video?”
James Corden is thumbing through texts on his cellphone inside his “Late Late Show” office at CBS Television Studios. It’s the day after the latest Carpool Karaoke segment — featuring the vehicular vocals of R&B star Usher — has aired, and Corden wants to know whether executive producer Ben Winston, seated next to him, has the latest intel on the video’s viral status.
“I haven’t heard back,” Winston, also checking his phone, says to Corden. “On YouTube, it slows down. So it’s usually double the amount — on the first day, it will be either double or triple the amount of showings. It says 2.3 million. So it’s probably around 4 million.”
“It’s still No.1,” Corden replies, verifying its ranking on YouTube. (By the time this article went to press, the number would grow to more than 11 million.)
In the three years since he took over as host of the CBS latenight talk show, the British comedian has made riding in cars with stars Must Search-andClick TV. The segment, in which Corden helms the wheel as he sings along with some of music’s most popular artists, has featured everyone from Adele to Stevie Wonder to Justin Bieber — and has emerged as a venue for celebs to jam out like no one is watching.
And now Apple, one of the richest companies in technology, is hoping the segment’s viral heft will help bolster its subscription service, Apple Music, in its original programming ambitions as the company looks to strengthen its presence in entertainment. “Carpool Karaoke: The Series,” a supersized digital adaption of the “Late Late Show” bit, just debuted on Apple Music.
“They are at the forefront of music,” Corden says. “So a music-based show with all these different people — it just seemed like Apple Music would be the right partners for us.”
When, not if, Apple would dive into the original programming space and challenge streaming companies such as Netflix and Amazon has long been a question industry insiders have wondered.
The company announced this year its plan to more earnestly join the original programming space to help distinguish Apple Music, the tech giant’s $9.99-a-month music streaming service, from such rivals as Spotify and Tidal — but the company has taken a mostly unhurried approach. It unveiled its first series, “Planet of the Apps,” a tech-contest reality show in the vein of “Shark Tank,” in June to little fanfare. Now comes the splashier “Carpool Karaoke.”
Signaling a bigger indication of its Hollywood ambitions, the Cupertino, Calif.- based company announced in June that it had tapped two Sony television studio veterans, Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, to oversee the company’s original programming business.