Apple's rumored streaming music service to tout social network for artists, report says
If and when Apple launches its streaming music service later this year, the company will roll in a social networking platform from which artists can share media, post updates and connect with fans, a report said Wednesday.
According to sources familiar with the matter, 9to5Mac reports the social media aspect of Apple's streaming music service is akin to Ping, the defunct iTunes feature that let artists maintain public pages for sharing music, concert dates, photos and more.
Apple's social networking solution is rumored to be intertwined with a brand new streaming music service, meaning iTunes account holders on all platforms can comment on and "like" artist posts and pages. Unlike Ping, users will not have the ability to create their own profiles, making the network only minimally interactive.
Spotify offers a watered down version of the upcoming social media experiment, allowing subscribers to follow generated artist pages that automatically aggregate similar band-related information. Apple, however, is reportedly looking to strike exclusive deals and partnerships with top music acts for its streaming music offering, which could lead to a more personal platform.
Today's report lines up with evidence discovered in Apple's most recent iOS 8.4 beta build, which contains a Restrictions toggle setting for displaying "Artist Activity" in the Music app.
While Apple has yet to make an official statement regarding its streaming music ambitions, industry sources and internal leaks point to a potential rebranding of Beats Music that could launch in the near future. Reports also claim Apple is negotiating with record labels for more attractive licensing deals, though talks have not been fruitful.
According to sources familiar with the matter, 9to5Mac reports the social media aspect of Apple's streaming music service is akin to Ping, the defunct iTunes feature that let artists maintain public pages for sharing music, concert dates, photos and more.
Apple's social networking solution is rumored to be intertwined with a brand new streaming music service, meaning iTunes account holders on all platforms can comment on and "like" artist posts and pages. Unlike Ping, users will not have the ability to create their own profiles, making the network only minimally interactive.
Spotify offers a watered down version of the upcoming social media experiment, allowing subscribers to follow generated artist pages that automatically aggregate similar band-related information. Apple, however, is reportedly looking to strike exclusive deals and partnerships with top music acts for its streaming music offering, which could lead to a more personal platform.
Today's report lines up with evidence discovered in Apple's most recent iOS 8.4 beta build, which contains a Restrictions toggle setting for displaying "Artist Activity" in the Music app.
While Apple has yet to make an official statement regarding its streaming music ambitions, industry sources and internal leaks point to a potential rebranding of Beats Music that could launch in the near future. Reports also claim Apple is negotiating with record labels for more attractive licensing deals, though talks have not been fruitful.
Comments
People use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and as far as I know, Facebook is the only profitable platform. I can't see the sense in Ping 2.
Unlike Ping, users will not have the ability to create their own profiles, making the network only minimally interactive.
You mean making the network only minimally intrusive?
I think it makes sense to not allow Users to create their own profile. All the User needs is his/ her Apple Id. I'm expecting some minimal customisation, such as preferred artists to make sure you see only what you want to see.
Overall though, with artists making announcements on Facebook, Twitter, Official Websites, email lists, etc., I'm not too sure how this would differentiate itself.
Still, if there's one thing I learnt from reading The Macalope, it's never to review an unreleased product.
What could be good is if this acted to make your media library dynamic.
So it isn't just that you have some Bjork albums but that when you are looking at your collection by artist there is your music and there is stuff from Bjork, tours, news about a new app.
This could be good if Apple convinces the labels and independents that this is a a personalized marketing channel.
What better way for me to know if someone who's music I bought is launching a new album than "through the album" I already bought or is touring near me.
It could turn purchasing a product into a relationship with the artist.
I would actually love to know if artists I've bought music from have new content, I haven't got time to look and I don't interact with media channels that would tell me.
I think that is quite normal unless the artist is in a very narrow high end profile.
Especially for small artists this could be revolutionary (if done right). Anyone who buys your stuff you can now speak to.
I could actually see this getting really complex and interesting. Consider a mixed, local and cloud and streaming service, you are listening to music, curated content from radio styled DJ's (Radio 1 people have been poached recently) AND then when a Bjork song plays from your library it threads in an "ad" from her saying "hey fan, have you heard my new work, listen to my favorite track from it", or maybe it threads in a short interview with her.
(I spent a short while in community radio management) - good radio software allows you to limit ad rotation and also artist, album etc rotation to avoid overdoing it. So "ad" spots from ANY artist might only play once every 30 minutes and from a single artist only once a day, or whatever.
If you pulled together all those elements it could create something really innovative, a new kind of pseudo radio that is populated with your artists, genius related music, curated programs and dynamic audio content woven in by artists alongside their stuff.
At any of those points you look at your device and there is an associated image/link so you then can buy the song, the ticket, click on the link for the video version of the interview.
I want my kids to inherit anything I buy if they choose to when I part this earth.
I want to be alerted to concerts by the artists I care about.
I want to order concert tickets with touch ID.
I want shazam built-in.
Make it easy and you will milk my money.
This idea pongs.
The other networks don't make it easy for people to hear the music though. Instagram could have left social to twitter, twitter could have left social to Facebook but they each have their strengths. Instagram is better for sharing photos, twitter is better for short, quick, frequent messages, Facebook is better for having a full profile with a friends network. To sell music, the artists have to link to other sites. They can post new song previews directly on iTunes that people can play and buy. It doesn't need to have profiles for everyone because there's not much for non-musicians to add to it, except their music tastes that they'd share elsewhere:
Apple had some spam issues with Ping and fake accounts too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping#Issues
They can block links from users in comments and filter the text.
Where someone on Instagram would post an image, someone on Youtube would post a video, on iTunes they post a song and get comments on it. It can be more like just a homepage for a musician's content. What they have now is a bit static:
https://itunes.apple.com/artist/lady-gaga/id277293880
It's not something that would compete with Facebook (profile), twitter (messages) or Instagram (images), it would be the music-oriented service that the other networks are lacking in. twitter tried to get into it but failed to get enough interest:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/21/5534814/twitter-music-is-officially-dead
It was intended to be a music discovery service that pulled song feeds in from other services including iTunes:
http://mashable.com/2013/04/18/twitter-music-launch-2/
but people had to subscribe to Pandora, Spotify etc anyway to hear the full tracks so they'd be just as well using those apps.
Having the Beats streaming service will help this time. Having a topup service that wasn't a monthly subscription could be added in too. So instead of paying $0.99 up front for a song, you have a balance from an iTunes credit or something and if the balance is 0 you only get to hear the preview but otherwise once you listen to a certain portion beyond the preview length, it takes say 1c out of the balance for every listen up to a certain period of time apart (e.g 1c per track every 24 hours). If you listen to the track enough times, you automatically own it.
This not only lets people discover music by having complete listening freedom, there's no monthly commitment and it should pass on more money to artists than advertising does. A single ad view doesn't pay 1c. People who gift iTunes vouchers could then know that instead of a $20 voucher being just an album or two, it's enough to let them listen to 2000 complete songs (~100 hours).
Ping 2.0 jokes aside I would like to think that Apple has learned from their abysmal failure and that the addition of Levine/Dre would ensure that any new form of social media integration with iTunes would be much improved
And what do Iovine or Dre know about social media?
The fact that Ping was launched as a part of iTunes was it's biggest downfall.
Hell no, Ping revisited - but what a "surprise" coming from Cook - and people still defend the Beats purchase...
Groan.
(S)He's baaaaaaaaack......
I disagree. The reason it failed was because Facebook pulled out at the last minute, when it was too late to cancel the project.
Had there been full Facebook integration, it could have been great, because that's where people are, and the ways to interact with artists there are...merely okay.
This new thing sounds more like what MySpace became, except with people, and possibly not shit. We shall see.
Groan.
(S)He's baaaaaaaaack......
Just be honest and admit that you loathe that "social" approach BS as well. Even if you have to agree with me; no problem.
If they do something like RapGenius does, where rappers can have their own accounts in my opinion that would be good. On RG, rappers can explain the lyrics to their songs and inspiration for the song, etc. Which is a cool feature, because sometimes artist like Nas and Kendrick Lamar have complex lyrics and hidden meanings, being able to read what those lyrics really mean is welcome. So, I am sure many would enjoy reading why Katy Perry, U2, Kanye, Maroon 5, etc wrote that song or what a line in the song means. Also to get concert info, free songs, promos, etc I think would be good.