Eddy Cue at SXSW 2018

Eddy Cue

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SXSW 2018: Eddy Cue On The Expanding Apple Ecosystem

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Keynote conversation takes into account new models for music consumption
Philip Merrill
GRAMMYs
Mar 13, 2018 - 4:15 pm

There's no doubt that Apple has made some sweeping changes to the way its products align with the consumption of music — look no further than the success of their Apple Music streaming service or the rampant rumors the iTunes music digital download store could be discontinued.

In a keynote conversation held at SXSW at the Austin Convention Center in Texas on March 12, Apple Senior VP, Internet, Software and Services Eddy Cue took some time to shed light into Apple's ecosystem expansion plans, including the music sector, with CNN's Dylan Byers.

The Apple Music subscription service grew in line with expectations last month, from 36 million subscribers to 38 million. But the paying customers for Apple Music and other subscription services are just a small part of the much larger demographic Apple is already serving.

"We have half a billion people visiting the App Store every week," said Cue. "There are easily 2 billion people in the world who can afford to pay for some level of music, yet Spotify and Apple Music combined have only around 100 million subs globally. There's a huge gap there and we both have to grow by a significant amount in order to get to the numbers that we should be at. … The opportunity here … is about sheer growth for music streaming, about compensating for that audience gap."

In addition, Cue highlighted Apple's smart speaker, HomePod, emphasizing its high music intelligence and its potential in a market with other smart speakers. Cue also reported the expanding adoption for Apple's AR software development kit, now in use by more than 2,000 App Store titles, saying the technology would become "a mainstream product that people use every single day."

Focusing on various touchpoints in Apple's business model, from streaming to apps, AR and more, it seems no matter what the rumors say, Apple isn't straying far from keeping music at the core of their business.

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Mr. Eazi

Mr. Eazi

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SXSW Adds Second Round Of Global Artists For March 2019 Festival

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Deerhunter, Mr. Eazi, Jerry Paper, Nadine Shah, and hundreds more emerging acts will make the 33rd SXSW in Austin, Texas a wild opener for 2019's festival season
Philip Merrill
GRAMMYs
Nov 28, 2018 - 2:14 pm

On Nov. 28 SXSW added more than 240 showcasing artists, including Deerhunter, Mr. Eazi, Jerry Paper and Nadine Shah, to their 2019 music festival lineup, in addition to 240 artists already slated in their first-round announcement last month. Emerging talent from around the world will be the center-of-attention in Austin, Texas on March 11–17, 2019, as the annual music event reconvenes for its 33rd year.

Any small sampling of the global array of up-and-comers planning to play SXSW next spring is bound to call on many rising stars and the hits they have in store. For example, also on Nov. 28, Nigerian afrobeats performer Mr. Eazi released Lagos To London, a documentary to complement his recent mixtape of the same name, explaining his evolution as an artist. As music consumers in the U.S. and elsewhere continue to build their interest in more international sounds, Mr. Eazi's fans have even compared some of his beats to those of K-pop phenomenon BTS. SXSW will bring plenty of global sounds to Texas, with Seoul, South Korea to be represented by Cifika and Duo Bud.

Read More: Keith Urban, K-Pop, Women In Music: Go Behind The Scenes At SXSW 2018

Experimental indie-rock group Deerhunter from Atlanta, Ga. and rapper Jerry Paper from Los Angeles, Calif. will be there. Tyler, The Creator teamed up with Paper just two weeks ago on their release "Hot Chocolate," to warm up the winter months. Britain's Nadine Shah is also a new addition to the lineup, whose growing following delights in her unique sound, blending jazz and pop with influences from the Sufi music she grew up listening to with her Pakistani dad, putting her on the Mercury Prize shortlist for 2018.

Feast your eyes on the diversity of SXSW's second-round list at the festival's website and then indulge your ears with the fest's compilation on Mixcloud, introducing just some of these acts' new sounds. Whether from Asia, Australia, Europe or North and South America, these artists leave an impression that the world is in good hands with the energy they bring, striving to enrich us with their music.

SXSW Announces First Wave Of Artists For Music Festival In Spring 2019

Shazam music app

Shazam

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Shazam IDs Can Now Be Shared Using Instagram Stories

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Whether seen people-first or as a boon from internet companies, easy music sharing like this is becoming a top form of engagement that is still growing
Philip Merrill
GRAMMYs
Nov 5, 2018 - 12:01 pm

There are a few ways to look at the Nov. 1 news that Shazam iOS users are now able to share music using Instagram Stories, but all are connected by the increasing ease-of-use to let more people share their favorite music casually. It was just over a week ago that SoundCloud added this feature, too, and as we noted then, Instagram is now used by more than half of internet users under 30. Shazam-sharing to Instagram also will roll out to Android users sometime in the future.

Music engages social media users more than any other category of content. One way of looking at this new emphasis on making it easy for users to share their music the way they like is in contrast to earlier years when people claimed they had no legal way to share music. The culture of platforms like Instagram to enable meaningful messages, spurred by impulse or planning, to shoot out on social is still growing. The hope was always that legal music sharing would thrive because nobody was worried about lawsuits. Today's sharing ecosystem makes much of that dream a reality, but the end is not in sight.

Another way to look at the new feature is to turn the whole music-app ecosystem upside down and think about it in terms of major platforms. Apple bought Shazam late last year and Facebook owns Instagram. Some reacted that the iOS-first rollout is no surprise because Apple is favoring its own users, but over the long term Apple plans to offer Shazam without advertising to Android users as well. It is perhaps more interesting to see this as an expansion of the way Apple wants its Shazam users to live their lives online. For Facebook, there are similar lifestyle-choice issues to why it owns Instagram, future-proofing its dominance with an alternative that has been a consistent youth magnet.

Whether this is viewed as something for everybody or more as the latest "no-brainer" handed down to us by big platform companies, sharing music like this is potentially good for everyone in the big picture. Letting others know what music someone likes has always been part of people's unique identity and taste. Now it's almost an online industry of its own, and it's still growing.

Ed Sheeran, J Balvin Are Shazam's Most Discovered Artists Of 2018 So Far

Apple Music

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Apple Music Reportedly Launching New Music Publishing Division

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Find out what Apple's move into publishing may mean for the company's future
Philip Merrill
GRAMMYs
May 30, 2018 - 3:47 pm

Reports on May 30 that Apple has created a new international music publishing division are raising speculations about the directions the leading corporation could take. "Luring songwriters" was how Rolling Stone described the expansion, while also pointing to the end-of-summer expectation that Apple Music's current 50 million subscribers will swell to exceed Spotify's 75 million subscribers.

What's clear is that the business deeply associated with New York City's Brill Building and Nashville's Music Row is expected to find a new base in cutting-edge digital technology companies. For example, when Sony announced on May 22 that it would spend $2.3 billion to acquire a greater stake in EMI Music Publishing, Sony President/CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said, "In the entertainment space, we are focusing on building a strong IP portfolio." That was certainly a vote of confidence in the value of copyrights.

Apple and its tech competitors cultivate and protect patent IP portfolios, underlying the innovations built into their products. The journey into artistic IP by Apple, at a minimum, will give it a vantage point and valuable experience on the copyright side. For example, it could help bolster the consummation of licensing deals more swiftly as well as lead to the direct signing and development of songwriting talent.

Elena Segal has been reportedly promoted to her new role as Global Director of Music Publishing at Apple Music, having previously worked as the legal director for iTunes International. When Apple Music launched globally in 2015, Segal was head of licensing, proving she could navigate and negotiate legal requirements that, unlike Apple's tech products, are not meant to be intuitive.

David Israelite, president/CEO of the National Music Publishers Association, praised Apple's new division as "wonderful," saying it "shows their respect and admiration for the publishing industry."

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virtual reality headset

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Leaked Specs For Apple VR Headset Invite Speculation

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The market for VR headsets could reach $10 billion in four years so it's no surprise Apple has plans in the works
Philip Merrill
GRAMMYs
Apr 27, 2018 - 3:53 pm

Apple's plans for developing a wireless virtual reality headset surfaced via Cnet News on April 27, causing people to travel in their imaginations to 2020 when they might be able to buy one. The tech specs for these plans include two eye screens with 8K resolution plus a custom chip handling the computational load from a nearby box that communicates wirelessly with the headset.

Other specifications leaked about the product under development are its use of 60GHz WiGig and/or 802.11ay for wireless communications. Additionally, the custom-built chip will be built with 5-nanometer architecture, twice the density of iPhone X's 10-nanometer processors.

On March 12 at SXSW, Apple Senior VP, Internet, Software and Services Eddy Cue took pride in having 2,000 App Store titles based on Apple's AR software development kit. The company has long been committed to augmented reality, which can also be integrated with iPhones and their sensors.

Immersive VR headsets would mark a step beyond that for Apple. Although the project has a codename — T288 — its rumored specs could be projections based on other innovations still making their way out of the lab and to the consumer marketplace.

At 8K per eye, supported by superfast processing, immersive VR has the potential to break through the reality barrier and supply a sense of seeing things as one does in everyday life. Other VR headsets and content are entering the consumer market this year, so Apple's long-term VR goals could also be influenced by the pace of the emerging aggregate VR market. Cnet quotes a CCS Insight study estimating 2018 AR/VR headset sales at 22 million units with the potential to grow to 120 million in 2022. That rosy projection would support a $10 billion per year VR industry four years from now.

Whatever Apple specifically decides to do as the release of its eventual VR products comes closer, observers expect their insistence on designing for intuitive use should make their product easier and simpler than the competition. This already includes being connected through the backend to Apple's computing ecosystem so any of its products can share data.

It is too soon to tell if they will program a virtual iPhone you can use in Apple's immersive worlds, but it's safe to assume you are sure to be connected.

Catching Up On Music News Powered By The Recording Academy Just Got Easier. Have A Google Home Device? "Talk To GRAMMYs"