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Jimmy Iovine Talks Apple Music, Competing Services, and Apple's Reaction to Taylor Swift's Letter
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I'm with you on this.
"For You" recommends really good music.
However, the over all UI of the app is pathetic... quality is absent everywhere.
The app has no character, creating playlists is a mess, adding playlists to your library is another mess... syncing those playlists between iPhone and Mac is a mess too... there are a million issues.
Here's a weird fact that Spotify brought up last year that they've been working on fixing:
Half of all tracks on Spotify and iTunes are never listened to. There are entire albums and artists which have received 0 plays or other attention. It's not a problem with the quality, but the fact that it's hard to be discovered. It's the same issue that's been well publicized about the App Store - it's either in the top X (20, 200, or 2000, normally) out of 20 million. Less than 0.1% of apps end up with a significant userbase.
I feel like "Discovered Weekly by Spotify", a new feature where Spotify makes a personalized playlist just for you based on your listening habits from the past week that they started a few months ago, has been amazing. Every week I get a list of 100 tracks nobody has ever heard of, and they're each amazing. A sampling of what I got this week:
Breaking Through by The Wreckage. An artist with a single EP and 1000 fans. Reminds me of Three Days Grace - I'm shocked they haven't had more success with this EP.
I'm Going In by Pain. Industrial Metal band with 25K fans and 7 albums. Kind of niche so I understand that they don't have many fans, but they sound pretty amazing to me.
Deus Ex Machina by Fear of Domination. Electronic Metal with 1K fans and 3 albums. Also niche, but I like them.
So Spotify is actually working on fixing that problem - that great artists exist and put their music out there, but are never discovered.
Apple Music? I used it for 3 days and all it ever recommended to me was Slipknot, a band which you've probably heard of who has several awards and millions of fans. Slipknot doesn't have a problem with people not knowing they exist. their music is fine, better music exists, but the problem is that Apple Music is so bad at helping you find undiscovered artists and it's so bad at actually recognizing the variety of subgenres within rock and metal.
Half of all tracks on Spotify and iTunes are never listened to. There are entire albums and artists which have received 0 plays or other attention. It's not a problem with the quality, but the fact that it's hard to be discovered. It's the same issue that's been well publicized about the App Store - it's either in the top X (20, 200, or 2000, normally) out of 20 million. Less than 0.1% of apps end up with a significant userbase.
I feel like "Discovered Weekly by Spotify", a new feature where Spotify makes a personalized playlist just for you based on your listening habits from the past week that they started a few months ago, has been amazing. Every week I get a list of 100 tracks nobody has ever heard of, and they're each amazing. A sampling of what I got this week:
Breaking Through by The Wreckage. An artist with a single EP and 1000 fans. Reminds me of Three Days Grace - I'm shocked they haven't had more success with this EP.
I'm Going In by Pain. Industrial Metal band with 25K fans and 7 albums. Kind of niche so I understand that they don't have many fans, but they sound pretty amazing to me.
Deus Ex Machina by Fear of Domination. Electronic Metal with 1K fans and 3 albums. Also niche, but I like them.
So Spotify is actually working on fixing that problem - that great artists exist and put their music out there, but are never discovered.
Apple Music? I used it for 3 days and all it ever recommended to me was Slipknot, a band which you've probably heard of who has several awards and millions of fans. Slipknot doesn't have a problem with people not knowing they exist. their music is fine, better music exists, but the problem is that Apple Music is so bad at helping you find undiscovered artists and it's so bad at actually recognizing the variety of subgenres within rock and metal.
I'll give you one thing.Apple music is a complete failure, the apple watch is a flop, Apple is nothing without Steve Jobs... Sack Cook immediately.... Shares are down...... Sorry just getting all of that out of the way before the naysayers arrive
Tim seems to be a sort of "yes" man, I don't think the purchase of the Beats brand would've never occurred under Steve's supervision. However, I do admire his efforts so far... Looking at the unification of the inner team within Apple, the oversight of building the new HQ & massive sales for the iPhone and such... Tim was the right choice to taking the helm of this sinking ship as quoted by Steve himself.
Being the successor to Steve Jobs is no simple task.
It didn't get 33.0000000001% and 39.0000001%, so Apple is DOOMED!
(Buying more AAPL as it "craters".)
I’m disappointed in you this time AD. Normally you’d photoshop the hell out of something to make me giggle. What happened here?Nothing says elegance like awkwardly-scrolling, bouncy, opaque bubbles.
Spotify has been doing streaming for 7 years. You learn a lot over those years, like how to figure out what people don't listen to and who might like that.
Apple music is what, three months old, with a 1.0 feature set.
well saidApple music is a complete failure, the apple watch is a flop, Apple is nothing without Steve Jobs... Sack Cook immediately.... Shares are down...... Sorry just getting all of that out of the way before the naysayers arrive
+1
"Music deserves elegance"
Wrong. Music deserves a good bug free UI and solid streams. Nothing should interupt me listening to music. And Apple Music does. Elegance is a non word in this perspective and a subjective statement.
Wrong. Music deserves a good bug free UI and solid streams. Nothing should interupt me listening to music. And Apple Music does. Elegance is a non word in this perspective and a subjective statement.
This past year I've sat back and thought 'wow, Apple is entering the same land Sears, Kmart, IBM, Microsoft ventured years ago.'
The fact that they have become so large...so admired...such a loyal fan base; those people are starting to turn on them if they don't pump out perfect product after perfect product, or innovation after innovation.
For example, iPhone 6 had huge success but it nit picked on a daily basis (it bends, 1MB RAM, etc...)
Apple Watch: It's not a MacBook Pro on my wrist...
Apple Music: It can't read my thoughts and dish out music I want to listen to this second!
How long until people get bored of Apple and jump ship? It's happened to tons of large companies that 'ruled the world.'
.....Hard to justify those statements with Apple nearing almost $1tril but still...
The fact that they have become so large...so admired...such a loyal fan base; those people are starting to turn on them if they don't pump out perfect product after perfect product, or innovation after innovation.
For example, iPhone 6 had huge success but it nit picked on a daily basis (it bends, 1MB RAM, etc...)
Apple Watch: It's not a MacBook Pro on my wrist...
Apple Music: It can't read my thoughts and dish out music I want to listen to this second!
How long until people get bored of Apple and jump ship? It's happened to tons of large companies that 'ruled the world.'
.....Hard to justify those statements with Apple nearing almost $1tril but still...
Nothing says elegance like awkwardly-scrolling, bouncy, opaque bubbles.
What do you think would be better?
The video that she sent to the store employees (i guess you can say that is not in public, but it was still poor quality speaking on a video to all Apple store employees, so it counts in my books).
Taylor Swift understands the concept of not getting paid by Apple for the use of her work perfectly fine.
It's more like there's some stuff Iovine doesn't understand.
- Not true. Not true at all. The sales you mention surely suggest that they are selling more and more so either there are few that think that Apple are perfect or they really are perfect? The Apple business model has changed slightly to a throwaway society one and that’s what people don’t like.
- Er……the last ones didn’t bend and RAM has always been moaned about.
- Whoever said it was. The problem is when Timmy et al gush about it on stage becoming the second coming and it doesn’t quite live up to that. The out pouring of superlatives is just ludicrous.
- No different from those criticisms levelled at any other streaming service. In fact with the size of the Apple fan base giving data back about iTunes library content it should be better.
- ……..and it always will. Get over it - Nobody is at the top forever.
Dunno. Just got used to chuckling at the pics recently. The Missing Jony Ive one really did make me laugh out loud.
What he's really saying, ok they called our bluff but it was worth a try, we can put some spin on it if uturn right now
The difference is that Sears and Kmart didn't have ecosystems and vendor lock-in, and they had actual competition. There were lots of department stores, and then discount stores.
IBM and Microsoft were monopolies, and there was nowhere better to go in many cases. But IBM and Microsoft are still thriving. Microsoft and IBM had some degree of a "loyal fan base" but not really "fans." In fact, people usually expected Microsoft products to be imperfect. They expected to be disappointed, and they usually were.
There's nowhere to jump ship to. Have you used Android? It's terrible, even with the new versions. Apple is far from ruling the world, Android is on far more devices, Windows is on far more computers. Apple is just really really good at making good products and making lots of money doing so. That's actually a pretty revolutionary concept.
The only one with a talent for public speaking is Craig Federighi. The rest are dull as dishwater.
Tim is not an ideas man. He just isn't. He's a bean counter who happens to know how to let the really talented people do their job. Thats the only reason Steve wanted him as CEO. He keeps the trains rolling and is a good embodiment of Apple culture. But he clearly has issues with mediocrity. Apple watch, Apple Music, iOS 8. All things with amazing potential that were rushed out too early.
Unfortunately Apple wants to sell products and doesn't care nearly as much about the experience. It now just has to be GOOD ENOUGH. And all this leads to Apple becoming the next Microsoft of the Mid 90s/2000s.
A simple list in which taping one item doesn't push all the other items away slightly. Something without monochrome pictures of artists wouldn't hurt.
Based on how many times I have to skip a song with Apple vs Pandora, I'll stick with the algorithms based service. Actually, Apple Music/iTunes radio is so bad, i'm seriously considering stepping up my Pandora account to a paid subscription, not because I need it, but because I want to support something that doesn't suck.