What I Want To See Next From Apple [Mark Mulligan]

With Apple Music barely a few hours old it might seem a little perverse to focus on what Apple needs to do next but Apple’s potential remains more latent than realized.

Guest Post By Mark Mulligan for Music Industry Blog

Apple has an opportunity to launch the sort of music platform the industry has been waiting for during the entire digital era but has not yet seen. It hasn’t done it yet but it now has the right materials with which to build it.

If Apple is going to make a meaningful long term impact on the streaming market it will need to play the innovation card. Apple music products have been something of the poor relation in innovation terms over the last half decade or so, looking on wistfully from their music downloads backwater while Apple’s devices undergo an innovation and design revolution.

If Apple can seamlessly integrate all its assets (radio, podcasts, downloads, on demand streaming, apps etc.) then it could create the most comprehensive and engaging music experience in the marketplace. Imagine listening to a Zane Lowe show on demand, but tracks are played in sequence. You like one of the tracks so you click ‘more by this artist’ and start listening to the latest album. Aftera few tracks you pull back into the show, listen a bit more and then see a link to an Artist Connect video of an interview by Zane with the last artist you listened to. You jump to listen to that then jump back into the show, decide you want to hear the first couple of tracks and what Zane had to say about them again and jump back to there.

In that scenario the user has jumped from semi-interactive radio, into on demand, back into semi interactive radio, non-music content, back into semi-interactive radio, then into fully interactive radio. Of course there are multiple business models at play with multiple rights frameworks but if a user was able to top up on Apple Music credit to use across the entire platform then s/he need never know when boundaries are crossed and the credit would simply get auto deducted from the balance.

Implementation wouldn’t be simple (especially form a licensing perspective) but that is the sort of innovation bar that Apple should now be aspiring to. Apple has a unique opportunity to become a true music platform. The first step has been taken (and some of the Artist Connect functionality may prove to be super cool) but now it is time for the real innovation fun to begin.