Apple Music’s First Year: What Works, What Needs To Be Retuned
Even before Apple carted Drake out on stage to help announce its new music streaming service last June, the company’s move was already seen as a big deal. And of course it was: Not only does Apple have a tendency to help reshape the markets it barges into, but this is music: The very industry Apple famously helped salvage from the smoldering ruins of Napster’s heyday by launching iTunes and the iPod.
With Apple Music — an all-you-can-stream service rebuilt from the guts of its $3.2 billion Beats Music acquisition — Apple would help mark another symbolic milestone for the music industry: With iTunes-style music download sales on the decline (never having fully filled in the crater left by a once-booming market for CDs), streaming was clearly going to be the future of how people listen to music and — as the colorful charts in music industry reports increasingly illustrate — how recorded music will make money (how much and for whom, of course, remain open, contentious questions).
Source: Fast Company