The radical idea behind Apple’s music service
Can we put aside, just for a moment, all the talk about whether Apple’s new streaming service will vanquish Spotify or expand the audience or disrupt an entire industry (again)? That’s a business story, and a good one, but it’s not the most interesting or important one, and it has nothing to do with the music.
Here’s the part that does: Beats 1, a global radio station curated by a trio of taste-making DJs (including former BBC Radio 1 star Zane Lowe), where everyone in the audience is listening to the same song at the same time.
Apple is, in other words, spitting into the face of what online music is and trying to transform it into something it’s never been: a truly communal experience.
That is a radical and, many would say — and have said — utterly ludicrous notion that flies against the fundamental principle that underpins every streaming service from Spotify to YouTube: individual choice above all else.
As a writer for the Verge who got to test-drive the new service noted, “Apple has four tabs for its music suggestions, just one for yours.”
The next logical question is probably too grandiose for anyone at the company to even ask out loud: Can Apple revive the archaic concept of a musical monoculture simply by giving everyone the opportunity to listen to the same song at the same time?
That expectation may turn out to be wildly misguided, but at least it confronts the need to do something, anything, to distinguish Apple from the established players in the field, each of which offers access to pretty much the same gaping pit of music at the same price point.
Grantland’s Steven Hyden locked into the perfect simile to articulate the conundrum facing all of them: “Charging money for access to music online is like putting part of the sky behind a paywall — even if it’s a really well-tended part of the sky, it’s too easy to simply look elsewhere.”
Apple isn’t a leader or a trailblazer. It’s a popularizer and synthesizer. It’s Bowie and Madonna, not Goldie and Skream.
And that’s just fine with them. Revolutions, Apple exec Eddy Cue tried to convince the New York Times, “are about bringing it all together and having the best product that actually works.”
The paradox of Apple’s vast constituency is that it is both technically savvy and wilfully blinkered. Features such as streaming music and online radio may well be available elsewhere — long available, in some cases — but for many it’s as if they don’t exist until they become part of the Apple ecosystem.
Mind you, Apple may ultimately have something more fluid in mind than just uniting a mass audience under one station.
Media analyst Mark Mulligan imagines this scenario: “Imagine listening to a Zane Lowe show on demand, but tracks are played in sequence.
“You like one of the tracks so you click ‘more by this artist’ and start listening to the latest album. After a few tracks you pull back into the show, listen a bit more and then see a link to an Artist Connect video of an interview by Zane with the last artist you listened to.
“In that scenario the user has jumped from semi-interactive radio, into on-demand, back into semiinteractive radio, non-music content, back into semi-interactive radio, then into fully interactive radio.”
All of a sudden the issue becomes: OK, where does Apple go from here?
And isn’t that a more absorbing musical question to ponder than, “Will its business succeed?” Vinyl countdown: It took an extra week, but Rhino/Warner got back to us about the audio source being used for the Sept. 4 vinyl (and CD) reissues of the post-Jim Morrison Doors albums Other Voices and Full Circle.
The company says it “went back to the analogue tapes” for both releases (on both formats).
When Rush’s biggest selling album, Moving Pictures (the one with “Tom Sawyer” and “Limelight”), returns to vinyl July 24, it’ll be packaged with a T-shirt.
As with the previous releases in the band’s yearlong vinyl reissue program, the 1981 release has been remastered from the original analogue masters and pressed on 200gram vinyl.
Four vintage Frank Sinatra titles were initially scheduled to come back to vinyl June 23 but have this week been pushed way back to Sept. 25.
Due that day are Come Dance With Me!, which was still on the charts two years after its 1959 release, and 1961’s Come Swing With Me!, with “That Old Black Magic;” along with 1966’s pop comeback Strangers in the Night and the following year’s The World We Knew, remembered chiefly for “Somethin’ Stupid,” his hit duet with daughter Nancy. Retro/active: The voice of the Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb” is this month putting out her first new studio album in 35 years.
The last full-length release from Cherie Currie was Messin’ With the Boys, the 1980 album she cut with her sister, Marie.
The new one, Reverie, turned out to be the catalyst for a bittersweet reunion with Runaways manager Kim Fowley, who died early this year just two weeks before recording was completed.
Fowley co-wrote and co-produced some of Reverie along with Currie’s son, multi-instrumentalist Jake Hays.
Also returning to the fold is longestranged guitarist Lita Ford, who patched things up with Currie and guests on new versions of the Runaways’ songs “Is It Day or Night” and “American Nights.”
Despite the long gap between releases, Currie hasn’t exactly been idle. She cut an entire album a few years ago for Blackheart Records, the label co-founded by Joan Jett. Sadly, it’s still sitting on a shelf. jsakamoto@thestar.ca
Apple isn’t a leader or a trailblazer. It’s a popularizer and synthesizer. It’s Bowie and Madonna, not Goldie and Skream