One Musician's Conflicting Thoughts On Apple Music

I never used Spotify. This wasn't to do with some protest against loss of royalties associated with music sales or a fervour for tangible products, I actually just didn't like the interface. True, you had all the music in the world at your fingertips, but it never felt like the music was actually yours.

There was something so joyless in the management of the records that you flagged, saved and made available for offline streaming. Besides, I liked iTunes. I bought an iPod as soon as I was old enough to afford one and it and its associated software galvanised the way I experienced music instantly. Some of my strongest musical memories are of sitting around in smoky garages passing an auxiliary cord between my friends and I, each of us choosing a song from our iPods that contained the carefully collated and managed contents of our iTunes libraries, and sharing it with the others. Our first iPods could hold about 8000 songs which, when compared to a disc-man or Walkman, seemed astronomical. Nowadays it seems a pittance. 

Even in my refusal to embrace Spotify I knew that the way people consume music was inevitably going to change enormously. It was just a matter of how suddenly and how smoothly. When Apple announced Apple Music a few months ago and I learned that the next time I updated my iTunes software it would incorporate their highly anticipated streaming service I could only throw up my hands and say, 'That's it! I can resist no longer!' It was clear that the age of streaming wasn't coming, it was here and, as an avid music consumer and listener, I didn't want to be left behind.

After listening to just a few tracks an inbuilt algorithm had already collated a handful of recommended albums and playlists that were disconcertingly suited to my tastes. It's easy to imagine these expert provided playlists becoming the medium through which most people discover new music (potentially killing FM radio in one fell swoop). Perhaps in the future young artists won't be celebrating radio plays or advertising sync but being added to a popular playlist where they will be heard by potentially millions of streamers who are on their commute home. I perused the 'coming soon' social media aspect with some interest. I'm quite curious to learn what other people are listening to but not the other way around (note my refusal to give up on Fall Out Boy). But, as on Spotify, the social aspect of music streaming is just a pretty frame. We're here for the music, right, man?

After using Apple Music for only a few moments I concluded bluntly that there is no foreseeable reason that anyone using it should ever purchase, or even own, music again. As a music consumer this was appealing. As a musician it was sobering. I would go from making very little money from record sales royalties to no money from record sales royalties at all and that was that. But I consume far more music than I produce so it still stands as a victory. Besides, I'm getting a bit bored with outraged musicians furiously insisting that their creative endeavours demand monetary reimbursement. It smells a bit of longing for the good old days of the Capitol building and the invoice for all the cocaine Fleetwood Mac hoovered making Rumours. The age of musical entitlement is over. Music was a product and now it's a service. And like all other services it comes with a monthly bill. Think of the $11 a month price tag as paying for your music license: a license that entitles you to listen to all to nearly all the recorded music in the world. 

It's also worth pointing out that streaming platforms are making the best of a bad situation. If a market is undesirable but also inescapable it's best to harness it so you can keep an eye on it, if not completely control it. Sort of like proposals to deal drugs. People were pirating and streaming music already so surely it's best for the artists and labels if it's done in a controlled environment. Streaming services have been instrumental in making the evils of music piracy an old fashioned conversation (kudos there goes almost entirely to Spotify). 

Apple Music isn't perfect. The ads you see about it being the 'perfect home for both music lovers and musicians' are both false and manipulative. Apple aren't stupid enough to ignore that streaming was an inevitable future and this is simply their bid to get in on the action. Sign up figures are, naturally, astounding but the really interesting conversation will arrive in a month's time when the free trial grace period ends and people have to fork over their hard earned to continue to have Apple's treasure trove of recorded music at their disposal (unlike Spotify, Apple Music does not offer a free platform for its users). It seems then that music streamers (ie. most people in the Western world) will have to choose a side on the Spotify and Apple Music battle lines. Have Apple finally been beaten to the punch and their delay in bringing their streaming platform to light has cost them the game? It seems unlikely.

I keenly watched the action unfold as Taylor Swift, a public Spotify condemner, pulled her music from the platform then re-added it and made a statement that Apple Music satisfies her definition of honouring artists' (financial) rights. Neil Young has pulled his catalogue on grounds of sound quality, which I can perhaps understand but hardly sympathise with. I'm no audiophile but On The Beach sounds just as cool through iPhone ear buds as on an originally-pressed, sepia vinyl to me. Folks like Jack White and Thom Yorke have both been outspoken about streaming 'devaluing music', but who are they, or any of the other aforementioned moguls and millionaires, to dictate music's value? How could something so integral to our human experience hope to be valued at all? More than ever music value is in the ears of the beholder and I would have thought if you can get your music heard by countless millions of people after entering a few letters into a keyword search then that was a good thing, right? Interestingly, Jay Z has made no comment, perhaps fearing any input might remind people he's the shamed owner of Tidal.