Apple Streamlines Music App
June 14 2016 - 3:10PM
Dow Jones News
Due to popular demand, Apple Inc. is adding a new feature to its
Apple Music streaming service: user-friendliness.
After launching a year ago with a cluttered interface and
technical glitches that confused and frustrated both users and
artists, the company said Monday at its annual developers'
conference that it would debut a redesigned Apple Music app this
fall.
"The main new feature of the redesign was clarity," said Apple
executive Trent Reznor—who co-led the redesign effort—in an
interview. Mr. Reznor, the frontman of the band Nine Inch Nails who
had also helped design the Beats Music streaming service that Apple
acquired in 2014, said the initial problems stemmed from the fact
that "we had a big vision…and it became hard to find some
things."
Last year a Wall Street Journal review likened the jam-packed
app to Russian nesting dolls: "menus within menus within
menus!"
The new version will still be packed with listening options but
will feature easier-to-read menus, and will make it simpler for
users to find songs in their libraries as well as songs to which
they recently listened. It will also make even more personalized
recommendations on the "For You" feature, taking into account
factors such as the time of day and day of the week.
The "Artist Connect" feature will no longer be a separate
destination, though artists can still post content for users who
opt to "follow" them on the service.
As for user complaints that ranged from lost songs to bugs that
prevented syncing playlists on various devices, Apple's vice
president of content and media apps, Robert Kondrk, said in the
same interview they had addressed all the feedback "in a huge
way."
Apple Music now counts 15 million paying subscribers, about half
as many as Spotify AB, which launched nearly a decade ago. Apple
executive Jimmy Iovine, the co-founder of Beats and the former
chairman of Vivendi SA's Interscope Records, said in an interview
that 15 million "still isn't a huge number," because subscription
streaming "hasn't hit the mainstream yet," despite his marketing
efforts that have included TV ads featuring stars such as pop
singer Taylor Swift and soul artist Mary J. Blige. He expected a
mainstream shift would take more time and education. In the U.S.,
paid services are struggling especially hard to compete with
companies offering free internet radio such as Pandora Media Inc.,
which counts about 80 million users.
Though Apple has hundreds of millions of customers with iTunes
accounts and credit cards on file, it has largely avoided targeting
Apple Music at those customers, to preserve its music-download
sales, said Apple's senior vice president of internet and software
services, Eddy Cue.
"What we've done is attracted a lot of customers that were not
buying on iTunes or buying very little," Mr. Cue said the
interview. "We're going to continue to invest in iTunes."
Write to Hannah Karp at hannah.karp@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 14, 2016 15:55 ET (19:55 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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