With ten years of streaming music under its belt, Apple is looking to the next decade with improvements in audio in mind and a new studio to record from.
If it’s been so long since you glanced at your CD collection, you may not be alone. Music streaming has become the default way so many of us get our music fill that you might have forgotten never having access to this much music in your life.
Ah, the good ol’ days. Back when you only could listen to what you owned or what the radio played, offset maybe a little by standing in the shops and listening to albums with a pair of the store-supplied headphones. Borders, HMV, Virgin and so on, we remember those days fondly.
These days, we all have it easy: millions upon millions of tracks available whenever you want them and in various degrees of quality.
Whether you listen to good enough CD quality or something a little more supportive of lossless or spatial, streaming services provide a veritable smorgasbord of sounds any time you want. You can always support the bands with an album purchase, but you can always just listen to a stream any time you want.
While Spotify may have set the world on this streaming music path (alongside Pandora, which doesn’t exist in Australia anymore), Apple Music wasn’t far behind, and if you can believe it, that was actually ten years ago.
Back in 2015, Apple kicked off its streaming service with a radio service that is available for free regardless of whether you subscribe or not which is still running today, and has expanded with international additions, at that.
As part of the celebrations, Apple is opening up a studio in Los Angeles specifically for Apple Music, housing two radio studios complete with spatial audio playback in a live environment. It also includes a spatial audio mixing room supporting a 9.2.4 system (nine speakers surround, two subwoofers, four dimensional) and large 371 square metre soundstage for live performances, as well.
In short, Apple is opening a made-for-music building for Apple Music, which probably means more live music captured and mixed in spatial audio on the way for subscribers of the service, and owners of its spatial-supporting headphones, devices like the AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro, to name a few.
“Apple Music Radio has always been a home for storytelling and artistry, serving as a space for bold conversations and surprising moments,” said Rachel Newman, Co-head of Apple Music. “With this new studio we are furthering our commitment to creating a space for artists to create, connect, and share their vision.”
Apple is also rolling out one more thing for its subscribers, which kicks in immediately: a look at the top 100 songs you’ve played in your time with the service.
Called “Replay All Time”, it’ll show what you’ve played most, which may or may not be a flashback to your favourite tracks, or in this writer’s case, a literal Rickrolling, harking back to when he used to help deal with the loud and horrible neighbours with a loop of every version of “Never Gonna Give You Up” that ever existed on repeat for hours.
Oh, and lots of kids music because, well, kids.
Outside of this, you can also expect the service’s most 500 streamed songs in a countdown coming this week, with 100 songs playing per day until July 5, when the entire list will be online to stream. It very likely will have only one version of Rick Astley’s signature track, in which case this writer may be partially responsible.
