They've been running Beats 1 for the last 5 years (now rebranding to just Apple Music 1). I like the idea of a pop & pop-adjacent radio station with a lot of different shows for different subgenres (it's obviously patterned after BBC Radio 1), but it never seemed to have the "right" mix of variety, and unlike Radio 1 it didn't really have any tentpole stuff to center around (like e.g. Essential Mix), just a lot of random short-lived celebrity-presented shows. Adding country and pop hits stations isn't exactly going to improve it, but I assume that's for people who found it a bit too left-field.
Kind of astonished it's quietly been on air for so long, and I wonder if the rebranding means they're actually going to revitalize it in some way or if this is just going to lead to them quietly dropping the more interesting aspects of it.
I listened to it a lot when they launched but the problem with it is they really treat their shows as live radio. There's no way to save them or subscribe and get notifications when they're live. There is no way to follow them. Searching for them is weird. Discovery is also awkward. There were and probably still are a lot of good shows but good luck figuring it all out.
I was listening when Beats 1 came on air, the song they played just prior to the start was Music For Airports by Brian Eno. That influenced me to include it in our Burning Man art this past year. [1]
I've subscribed to Apple Music since the start, but apart from a massive catalog, I can't help but feel that it is a neglected product.
Apple put Jimmy Iovine in charge of that business, presumably because the company needed industry legitimacy and the connections he had.
However, I do not think Iovine or his lieutenants were music "fans", which are people who for personal reasons intentionally seek out new artists, listen to them and share their picks with friends.
I think this lack of familiarity with the customer and how to connect with them through mobile software products led to the state it is in now.
What is strange to me is that Apple Music as an application has not improved. The views do not pre-cache, so they are the slowest loading of any app on my iPhone. Apple Music often fails to perform searches properly.
Despite the volume of data Apple had from my music preferences _before_ Apple Music existed, the recommendation engine is still no good, and the music curation lacks any semblance of personality.
When I ask Siri to play a song, it sometimes feels like Apple Music tries to play a version of the song that has a lower licensing fee than the one I'm actually after. This is total conjecture, but I would not be surprised.
That Spotify has done as well as it has is more a credit to the failure of Apple Music to materialize into something at all representing the vast beauty and detail of music.
I occasionally have tuned into Beats 1, especially if there was an artist interview I wanted to hear. But I really did not like the vibe of Zane Lowe. I felt like he was always fawning over the artists and he interrupts them while they're talking.
Hopefully, these minor radio changes are indicative of a larger changes coming to the Apple Music product as a whole.
Beats 1 has some incredible shows but the live stream was always a bit odd due to the eclectic mix. I hope this is a tweak - they had a really interesting take on radio compared to say SiriusXM.
The biggest complaint I've heard from US listeners about Beats1 is that there's too much hip-hop/rap. So now they have stations for people who don't like hip-hop/rap.
Presumably some of the various celebrity shows are going to move to the two new stations, while others will stay.
In terms of “tentpole” shows Elton John has hosted his for a long time and it’s fantastic. Josh Homme also does a great show (which seems to run in “seasons” rather than every week).
Apple today announced two new live global radio offerings
...and that's where you lost me.
Global radio doesn't work. Hundreds of companies and thousands of people have tried it, and it's never worked. People are different all over, they're not the same, so they don't all want the same thing.
I stopped listening to the BBC World Service when it stopped being about Britain and started being "The world's radio station™," because it just got boring and repetitive.
"Centralcasting" is what almost killed radio in America the 1990's. Jacor/Clear Channel ate hundreds of stations across the country and had a computer in Kentucky decide what music should be played for an entire nation. It didn't work. People flocked to iPods and streaming to get away from the homogeny. Those stations that kept true to their local content survived, and some thrived.
Even Sirius learned this with its satellite radio stations, and the DJs no longer pretend to be some monolithic continental presence in the sky, and instead talk about wherever they're broadcasting from, and some even bend the playlist to match their geography, so it changes through the day as they switch from a host in Detroit to one in Boston to one in DC to one in L.A. When I was in broadcasting it was called a POD — Point Of Difference. Why can DJ A give me that DJ B can't?
KCSN/Northidge and WXRT/Chicago are both AAA radio stations, but they don't play the same songs. They're tailored to what their LOCAL audiences like. That's a good thing. Apple Global Mega Huge Music One has no local audience, and zero feedback other than a subscriber count.
When I listen to a pop station in London, I hear different music than when I listen to a pop station in Los Angeles or Melbourne. That's good. I listen to music from stations all over the world, and in genres I don't ordinarily like, simply because I enjoy the discovery of new songs and artists that I never heard of.
Apple has enough money to keep this online for a very long time, even if no one listens. But why? Who is it good for? Aside from a branding exercise, or trying to give one more checkmark for its bundled services package, what's the point?
> People are different all over, they're not the same, so they don't all want the same thing
You are right, but right about the wrong thing.
A few weeks ago there was a submission here on HN about a site that shows a world map with the locations of radio stations with internet streams marked, and plays one at random from a circle around the center of the map.
I spent quite a while going all over the world at random listening to what their stations were playing.
Yes, I heard a vast difference between pop stations in the United States and pop stations in Australia and pop stations in England. I heard a vast difference between pop stations in different states in the US, too.
But I also heard a lot of similarity. No matter if I was listening to random stations in Russia, or South Korea, or Nigeria, or New Zealand, or various states in the United States, I heard a lot of the same artists.
So yes, people don't all want the same thing. But it seems that in most places there are enough people who do like the same thing enough to want to listen to it along with the things that are more specific to their region.
That's all that Apple needs to get listeners. They won't become the only station for many people, but they could easily become a station that many people around the world do regularly listen to in addition to stations that focus on their regional music.
But I'm not sure that geography is the best way to segment & present music going forward? I live in Texas, but that doesn't mean I'm always in the mood for Texas music.
This will be interesting to watch—variations in music scenes around the world have made music rich and diverse, but most artists now (at least attempt to) launch to a global audience. In this new scenario, the diversity I think pulls from being able to gain traction without going through the traditional gatekeepers. There's also a lot more interesting fusion happening as artists are exposed to so many other artists worldwide.
I do agree with your larger point that centralcasting can make for boring playlists, so this product isn't for me. But I've also found that there are people who don't want to do all the effort of discovery and curation of their music—they just want to hit play and have a soundtrack for the day going. This feels like Apple trying to solve for that use case.
I live in Texas, but that doesn't mean I'm always in the mood for Texas music.
I'm not sure what "Texas" music is, even though I lived there for many years.
Maybe you're interested in listening to rap music. Rap music on radio stations in Houston isn't the same playlist as rap music on a radio station in New York, or Paris.
Rap is actually a great example of this, because rap is very geographic. Montreal, Paris, and even London have rap music that is vastly different from rap music in New York or Los Angeles or, again, Houston.
What Apple could/should do is make regional flavors of its stations, rather than going for this "global" cliche. Then people from different places could learn about music from other places, even if it's the same genre.
They do this based on shows. There's a show from New York, a few from London, some from LA, and then a bunch of artist-led shows. They're all run on a schedule so you can tune in to the ones you're interested in.
If they were being globally-minded about these "global" stations, Country would not be the second station they make. What a misfire.
I think you're letting you biases show. I've heard country music on radio stations from Germany to Japan to Mexico. There are even country music artists from Europe that show up on American radio stations.
I think Apple has enough data and enough smart people looking at that data to know what genres to pick.
Country music is pretty popular in West Africa be user the topics they sing about are universal (e.g. Love, family, overcoming hardship) and the lyrics are easily understood. Why shouldn't country be popular? It's basically pop music but with only guitar chords, vocals and themes about rural living.
We're different, and yet... The song Senorita has been in the top 50 in almost every region of the world for a very long time now. So we're different, but we're also the same.
Beats1's main schedule centers around three shows, broadcasting from Los Angeles, New York, and London. Those are the primary markets for which they're aiming, and the music each of the three main DJs plays is different. American and British movies and television tend to play well around the world, and I'm not sure radio is that much different.
Is Beats1 the best radio station for local Tunisian listeners? Is it ever going to be the #1 station in Morocco? Probably not, but many people (especially young people?) in nearly every area of the world consume a lot of western content, presumably enough to keep Apple happy.
I mean, if you're saying you want a radio station that takes chances and plays music you like without repeating the same top 40 hits endlessly, I'm with you. I'm not sure the geography plays as much of a role as you think it does, though. In theory a station could broadcast worldwide and still take chances and avoid repetition.
TL;DR: ClearChannel doesn't suck because they own stations in every US market. They suck because they suck, and it's unfortunate that they own channels in every market because that means it's hard to escape their suck.
I really don't understand what they've done with the Beats brand. They've released a handful of headphones (that in my experience have suffered an array of technical faults compared to reports from Airpods users) and Beats 1. Now they're killing off the latter.
It clearly fits into the Music product better but even after the corporate takeover there was something cool about "Beats" as a brand. It even sounded good in the stings. Oddly this is currently in Music as "Apple Music Beats 1" next to Hits and Country, which is even worse than one or the other.
The visual branding of all three stations is amateur too. Quite clearly so next to the Beats branding.
I wonder what the real success of the station has been - it seems to have all the right ingredients even if I'm not that interested after Julie left. It's always seemed a little discard by Apple, as it often is with these big tech companies and their side projects. If this was a business in its own right, as with Apple Music, I assume there'd be more publicity and a more competitive product.
Beats One was supposed to be a differentiator for Beats before it was acquired (I worked on it). The point was that it would be unique content you couldn't get from a commodity streaming service, and the hosts would bring an existing fanbase.
My impression is post-acquisiton Apple figured their brand would be sufficient to differentiate them, so they kind of stopped caring about the very high-touch work involved in curated radio. I think at this point it makes sense to view Apple Music as "commodity music streaming but it's apple, so it's preloaded, etc."
Beats 1 has been the free version of Apple Music service for some time, but no one really knew that because of disjointed marketing/branding. This is a good step in unifying the services into a cohesive set of offerings.
Okay, but why would I, someone who doesn't pay for Apple Music, care about a grand total of two new stations? You say This is a good step in unifying the services into a cohesive set of offerings, but honestly, as someone who tries out Apple Music once a year for free and then goes back to Spotify, I have one takeaway from this announcement.
Apple Music users are getting... 2 whole new stations. That's it. Oh, and a rebrand.
If this is supposed to be a big marketing push, they are doing a good job at encouraging me to stay on Spotify.
I just switched back to iOS about a year ago and I haven't seen an ad for it in the app store or had it recommended for any of the music players I've test driven since I switched back.
I'm not sure if that's just bad marketing or is it Apple not pushing its own products in the app store?
If you haven't listened to Soulection (radio show every saturday on beats 1 and archived on soundcloud), stop what you're doing and add that to your life.
Thanks for this rec! I see it's also actually archived on Apple Music as well, which is nice. Really wish Beats 1 surfaced their non-celeb-hosted shows like... literally anywhere in the Browse interface.
I wonder if all radio apps like TuneIn will be banned from the app store because they will directly compete with an apple software, I believe I saw this clause in the apple TOS...
They need to re-ramp the UI/UX on Apple music app. I have been using it for fairly long time and you can see how other competition like Youtube/Spotify have much nicer recommendations and ease of use. Some sort of streamline and unification needs to happen.
Personally I LOVE the lack of recommendations in my face. I find that one of the most annoying features of YouTube. They just run me in circles when it comes to playlists and I have a hard time training it to let me listen to more than one song of something different.
But I don't let Apple Music run with streams, really. I stick to my own selections. So YMMV
I try Apple Music about once a year. Only when they are offering a free trial. I always cancel the trial quickly. Apple Music is just bad. Ignoring my experience with a privacy violation that still makes me question Apple's commitment to privacy, nothing about Apple Music is enticing. Ignoring the confusing UI, music discovery is awful.
Apple has a large selection of songs it can pull from to know what I do and do not like, and could easily recommend things for me. The last time I checked out the recommendations, they were awful. Spotify? Spot on. =) Also, Spotify is just available everywhere I want it. Apple? Pretty much "Apple brand" or nothing. Apple is not the end-all of my universe. I'm sure Apple Music is fine if you ONLY use Apple products or listen via Apple approved products, but no one I know does that. Not even the iOS developers I know.
Anyways, even if you are a fan, you have to admit their offering is pretty lame.
I have to disagree pretty strongly. I have both Spotify and Apple Music, and the latter has spot on recommendations, sound quality, and the far better UX for me. Probably 80% of my listening time is in Apple Music. TIDAL seems better for lossless/master quality in my stereo setup but is really expensive, so I only sign up occasionally.
The only reason I use Spotify is sharing playlists with friends or on social media, which is something Apple Music recently added, but isn’t widely used. I will admit that Spotify has nailed The music sharing UX.
I just opened up Apple Music to see if it changed much. I tapped on a song to play. Instead of playing, I got a full screen ad.
A full screen ad. For Apple Music. The app I'm in.
Edit: And I want to make sure I'm clear here. I pay for iTunes Match. I have a nice music library, and it's in iTunes, so I like having it with me where I go when I want to listen to something from that. So, I'm in Apple Music, trying to play music I own. And it's synced through a service I've already paid for. And Apple has the audacity to ask for more money? Stop me from playing my music after I've already paid them and deal with an annoying full-screen popup Ad.
Opened Spotify, and is synced up with what my Desktop is doing.
It's fine you disagree. It's just Apple has done everything they can to make me hate using Music.
It's fine you hate using Music, but at least be honest about the situation: You want it without paying for it.
You're not paying for Apple Music. Apple Music costs the exact same price as Spotify Premium: $10 a month, or $15 for a family.
You're paying for iTunes match which is an annual fee of $25 that lets you play your CD-ripped library anywhere without transferring the files. Go to your Library, play your music, relax, this is what you paid for.
To suggest that somehow you're entitled to free Apple Music because you pay an annual fee of a separate product, is disingenuous.
Definitely agreed on recommendations, I've just been switching over from Spotify to Apple Music this week (adding aftermarket CarPlay and Spotify's support for that was a trainwreck). Overall I like Apple's app better across all platforms, except using web rather than native on Windows. On Apple's platforms it's snappier than Spotify, feels properly native, and is presumably better for battery life since it's not made of a bunch of Chrome instances glued together. But I definitely feel like I'm losing something with Discover Weekly and Release Radar.
Apple has their "For You" tab, but it's not as streamlined and the recommendations have been much more hit or miss.
Maybe it needs some more time to figure out my music tastes.
Spotify's automated recommendations seemed okay for me at first, but since I spend most of my time using spotify while working, I think the algorithm decided I'm really into instrumental or ambient music that isn't too complicated and that's all I get now.
Where Spotify really did a good job was just having artists create curated playlists that you can take. I'm amazed Apple doesn't do this more. They have "Inspirations" playlists that are kind of stuff that influenced a specific hit album, but they're clearly curated by someone at Apple.
I guess what I'm asking for is for them to recreate Ping, but make it good this time. Haha
Trying to understand. In a world of gazillions of radio shows online on so many platforms including direct and indirect competitors, with traditional shows going online, with platforms like pandora. Why two radio stations from one big company is such a big deal?
i’ve used apple music for a couple of months and i don’t understand why people use it compared to spotify. the UI is awful and buggy. the UX is horrific.
I use it out of raw simplicity. I have an iPhone already and I've found it pretty brilliantly easy to search up an artist and add it to my library.
I don't often stream, though. I will when I'm working—usually via Apple Music web (I'll give you the web interface there, but it is fairly new) or Youtube (can get annoying).
Apple Music on my phone has been great, though. Probably the thing I like most is that it blends the downloaded albums from the streaming service with my existing library. I don't have enough experience with Spotify to know if that's possible with it as well.
Spotify's emphasis on podcasts and other forms of media kills the experience for me. Apple Music is more of a final destination, I use many other sites for discovery and rarely make or update playlists - I think it excels in library management. The one thing I do find horrific is how it tries to 'prefer' original lp's vs remasters.
I agree with all of this, and I still use Apple Music. My only reason is that it offers fairly seamless integration between your existing library mp3s and the streaming stuff. Spotify is leagues behind in this regard, my assumption is that it's on purpose because their goal is to get people to stream as much as possible.
Spotify is extremely slow and battery-draining on my 6s. I don't want the random videos that play either. I also want the integration between my mac, apple tv, watch and iphone.
I don't see celebrity shows as attracting a big audience. I have to like the celebrity, to want to listen. They should try to break new music. Like The Weeknd will preview his new song/album LIVE here, before it goes on the streaming services.
Plus, if you take EDM/dance genre for instance. All the big shows/DJs play the same current hits. There are lots of less known tracks that come out that a DJ/show could break.
Shoutcast has been a thing for near a quarter of a century. I don't see how this compares favorably at all. I have been streaming Shoutcast stations on phones since the late 2000's back on featurephones.
iOS I'm currently using 'radio.net' for a Shoutcast client, Android I use Radiodroid. Tons of stations across pretty much any genre. Lots of FM stations that simulcast on here as well.
Is there something I'm missing about Apple's service that doesn't even provide a way to play old shows? Are they trying to do live streaming as a creative way to skirt licensing costs (like how FM stations don't pay a penny to play songs). I seem to recall soma.fm and di.fm shoutcast stations trying to lobby and get fair licensing structures, and they still pay $$$ to keep their services up.
That's not really what the product is about. They already had Beats 1 Radio before which is just like a regular radio station but with well known hosts they hired.
Some shows that were on-air are usually available as on-demand after the show.
If you are not looking for the exclusive shows or you want to avoid switching to a different apps it's probably not a product for you.
Thanks for the clarification, I looked into it a bit more and it looks like what you get on the radio section is a Shoutcast client with 3 exclusive stations. I would assume the integration is a better feature sell than the exclusivity agreements. It seems more of a cheaper competitor to SiriusXM when viewed this way, where instead of leaning on the Shoutcast broadcasters to fill in a sparse radio section, they actually run a bunch of their own curated stations.
I was confused as to why Apple would buy beats as a brand when they were clearly planning around AirPods and Apple Music. I'm sure that combo would have beaten Beats with enough time.
It was more about Jimmy Iovine and Dre and less about headphones. They had a star team, Ian Rogers, Jimmy Iovine, Dr. Dre and Trent Reznor as creative director... and somehow we ended up with Apple Music. sigh
The negative opinions on Beats often seem snobbish and dare I say bigoted. But I will admit it was a strange get for Apple as a brand.
Although I remember some gossip about them buying it mainly for the music licensing deals that Beats had, and probably the recording industry clout of Dr. Dre.
While the sales side of things is pretty despicable, Sirius XM is pretty nice (an online subscription is only $8 a month). I also subscribe to Digitally Imported (electronic music, with dozens of genre-specific channels), a service I've listened to since the early 90s, for about the same price point.
Kind of astonished it's quietly been on air for so long, and I wonder if the rebranding means they're actually going to revitalize it in some way or if this is just going to lead to them quietly dropping the more interesting aspects of it.