At the start of today’s launch event, CEO Tim Cook said that Apple now has 17 million paid subscribers, up from 15 million since June. While the the Apple Music portion of today’s presentation lasted only a couple of minutes, Cook emphasized exclusive content.
“Apple Music has become the premier destination for artist to exclusively debut new music,” said CEO Tim Cook at the start of today’s Apple launch Event. Apple debuted more than 70 music exclusives last year, according to Cook.
Cook began today’s event with James Carden, Pharrell and a carpool karaoke style video.
More Automated Music Discovery
Apple Music beta testers are already seeing some of the promised features to help find new gems in Apple Music’s ever growing 35 million track catalog. But instead of calling it the previously announced name “Discovery Mix,”Apple is using the categories My New Music Mix” and “My Favorites Mix” instead. The shift is likely to differentiate itself from the features it copied from Spotify. its popular Discover Weekly playlist and its new Release Radar playlist.
This adoption of data driven music choice is a real shift from the longstanding Beats/Apple pledge to put human curation first.