KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 31 — Apple Music is fast gaining ground in the music streaming arena even with heavy competition from its biggest freemium rival, Spotify.
The service is available in 110 markets to Spotify’s 79 despite not offering a free tier. Spotify offers free, albeit ad-supported streaming, a model that has not endeared the service to musicians.
What’s interesting is not so much the aggressive expansion as that is just the nature of business, after all.
Apple has set its sights higher for the service, envisioning it as not just a streaming platform but an important tool for musicians by leveraging the power of this age’s currency — data.
A streaming evolution
Apple recently launched Apple Music for Artists that allows artists access to streaming insights.
These include where their music is playing, which tracks are being searched for on Shazam as well as how many people are listening to their music at any one time.
Musicians also get a little more control over how their profiles are presented on the platform via custom profile pictures.
As to how music gets on a platform, that is a dance between record labels and Apple. It’s about negotiating rights in particular countries and haggling over royalties.
For artists such as Yuna, the insights on platforms like Apple Music helps them make decisions about tours.
“We all go through the analytics, like every week, to see the growth,” she said at a private media briefing in Singapore.
Being able to see the number of people listening to her music on the platform has helped Yuna and her team decide whether further touring would make sense.
“It definitely helps us to plan what our moves are in the next few months,” the singer said.
Stars as the new radio stars
What Apple has managed to do is attract big personalities to host shows on the platform, including the likes of Sir Elton John and Ebro Darden.
Yuna herself was a guest on Ebro Darden’s Beats 1.
“Being able to share my music on that level is so important for me. I need to represent my music. Really talk about it and tell a story. It was a great opportunity to be able to do that with someone (Ebro Darden) who has such a huge influence in music,” Yuna said.
Apart from Yuna, other big names have also appeared on Apple Music’s radio shows, including a recent session with Kanye West.
K-pop darlings Blackpink as well as NCT 127 have also appeared on the platform.
Besides being interviewed, the stars often are highlighted via their curated playlists or staging “takeovers” of chart plays.
Keeping listeners
Spotify’s freemium model is attractive enough that Apple Music gets enough feature tweaks to make paying a subscription seem worth it.
One new feature this year was the ability to pre-add an album before its release, so it would be added to a user’s library on launch day.
Local radio stations are now available on Apple Music as well and for people who like singing along, time-synced lyrics are also available.
Apple also recently launched the Apple Music app for Mac, a separate app where once it was part of the now retired iTunes app.
As to what Malaysian listeners are looking for, Apple listed the following artists as the top five in Malaysia: BTS, Ariana Grande, Blackpink, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish.
As for the top five genres, pop, K-pop, hip-hop/rap, alternative and Mandopop currently reign.
“The likes of pop, Mandopop and K-pop are huge in Malaysia, and we’re seeing significant growth in genres like Hip-hop, Latin and Country, our fastest growing core genre around the world including SE Asia,” said Oliver Schusser, vice-president of Apple Music and international content.
Despite a love for machine learning and AI, Apple still believes in the power of the human touch when it comes to music curation.
The company has its own tastemakers who help highlight what’s hot or on-trend, thus catering better to Apple Music listeners.
In its two-pronged approach to woo both musicians and music consumers, Apple looks set to dominate markets where Spotify is (for now) top dog.
It also has one edge over Spotify — where its competitor is relying on streaming as its core business, Apple Music is just a complementary part of an ecosystem.
Now the question is whether Apple Music will be able to make inroads into trickier markets such as Korea’s, which is dominated by various local players such as MelOn, Naver and Soribada.
Will Apple’s approach to selling Apple Music as a service about and for artists be enough to break down the barriers in the land of K-pop? We’ll just have to wait and see.
