Apple Music - Don’t Forget Us.
The “humans over algorithms” storyline that that is the centerpiece of the PR around Apple Music certainly seems genuine.
But what about the humans that made the music?
Not just the artists on the digital album covers but the musicians, the engineers, the friends, labels and studios that make albums and songs possible.
What about folks like me and my friends?
A Great Service For the Listener
I’ve spent time with Apple Music every day since it came on the scene, and every day I hear playlists I love to listen to and feel the service is understanding me better. Apple Music “surfaces content” that it thinks I’ll like, and usually I do.
There are some complexities to the interface but they will be easily addressed with minor updates.
In many ways, it’s a miracle the user experience in Apple Music is as good as it is given the challenges they faced: Integrating the team at Beats, being a part of the over-stuffed iTunes desktop software, retaining the digital storefront of the iTunes Store while adding a streaming service and differentiating Apple Music from a crowded field when they’re anything but first-to-market.It makes my head spin.
It’s really something to behold - they’ve passed the bar for delighting the consumer users of the service.
But that’s exactly why we consumers pay Apple the big bucks.
We may, in fact, pay Apple the most bucks that any company has ever been paid.
So we need to hold them accountable when they miss something. And they are missing something huge that I’m not convinced they see. It affects the user experience for both consumers and artists.
It ties in so well with their “humans over algorithms” storyline that it’s baffling it’s not being addressed right out of the gate.
Liner Notes: Words for Humans, About Humans, By Humans.
Liner Notes. Album Credits. Lyrics. Artwork. Aside from the music, it’s arguably the other half of what you were buying when you bought a physical record in the old days.
A well-thought-out list of humans involved in making the thing you hold in your hard.
Liner notes were our musical Internet.
The liner notes of Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral led me to more records produced by Flood. And yes, that example is for Trent Reznor. Hi, Trent.
I pored over the liner notes of Dilate, inspired by the way Ani Difranco’s lyrics read as poetry.
Random discoveries - Flea played bass on Alanis Morrisette’s record?!
That’s Adam Duritz and Elvis Cotsello singing backup on that Wallflowers song?
Jesus, Pino Palladino is an insane bass player.
Jim Keltner is everywhere.
When Mick Fleetwood plays drums on a Warren Zevon record, magical hilarity ensues.
Max Martin wrote every pop song on the radio for a number of years…including this year.
Liner notes are where I learned who the drummer was on every single record I owned.
Liner notes are how my friends became walking encyclopedias who could draw a line, no matter how thin, between records that spanned genres and generations.
That’s where we learned to blame producers for bad records, to see who was involved that might have turned a formerly credible band into a sellout. Or take a band to the next level, depending on how we saw it.
It became like a second language -- you learned to see studio names, see certain bands thanked over and over again. Start to write little stories in your mind.
Songwriters whose work we could admire and follow as they provided the musical framework for artists to develop. Producers. Engineers. Humans.
Each one of these people represents an industry, one being bulldozed over by what appears to be simply a lack of attention to detail.
If money talks then sure, I think each one of my liner notes discoveries probably led to a sale of another album or a concert ticket.
But I’m certain liner notes helped me define who I am as an artist.
And Apple has led us to believe that, to them, that’s just as important as sales.
Now I’m a drummer, a producer, a writer, and a performer. But I’m just a regular one. Not a super-sized celebrity one. When I produce a record, it’s not the headline that gets people to read the story. But I am a part of the story.
And it’s a story that’s completely missing from Apple Music.
The Current Discovery Experience is...WTF.
As I write this I’m listening to one of these ballyhooed human-curated playlists from Apple Music’s editors called 'Heads Down: Leftfield Music for Working and Studying'. It’s great, and works as advertised.
I hear a song I like and click on the inscrutable little ellipsis graphic to get to this Artist’s page and learn more. [^1]
Here on this band’s Artist Page, along with their songs ranked from most to least popular, I have, on the side some unlinked, plain-text boring biographical information.
It is outsourced from Rovio/AllMusic.
Having outsourced biographical information on Apple Music is like seeing a boom mic hanging down during a pivotal scene of The Godfather.
If Apple is like Disney and Apple Music is Disneyland, this is a sign for Six Flags next to Space Mountain.
Syndicated content just shouldn’t be there. It completely removes you from the controlled and delightful experience we expect from Apple. [^2]
Speaking of The Godfather. Can you imagine watching a movie without detailed credits? A Television show? It would be unthinkable.
Sure, it might not matter to YOU who the Best Boy was, or who was “assistant to Mr. Connery”, but it matters to someone. And I’d argue even if that someone is just the someone listed and their proud parents, that in and of itself is worthy. But I suspect it’s worth much more.
And I know Apple knows this because on the iTunes Store, the store that is named after music, you can explore a linked list of the actors and directors in Movies and Television shows, sending you down a delightful rabbit hole.
It is possible that all of this stems from a couple problems:
First, an overwhelming cultural belief that the person (or band) on the cover is the only piece of information that matters, coupled with the assumption that if we want more information about a band we can just Google it. Those are two trends the company that had their engineers sign the inside of a computer case should be more proactively working to counteract.
It also speaks to a fundamental difference between the film/tv and music industries that is often left unspoken and needs some serious attention — the lack of substantial labor organization in the music business. I think not having our shit together at the bargaining table means we don’t get to demand credits. Or have a voice beside Taylor Swift in the erosion of our income via paltry streaming payments.
But that’s for another post.
Or maybe for me to devote the rest of my life to. I can’t decide.
OK, So What About Connect?
The message at WWDC this year was clear — Apple wants artists to feel at home on their Connect social network.
I got excited about trying out Connect with a couple of projects I’m involved with right now.
For one, I am working on a new solo record, my first in seven years.
So, I go to my Apple Music profile page. Once again, I’m faced with the digital equivalent of a cell phone going off during a Broadway show: AllMusic’s syndicated content.
My Apple Music page still has a bio written about me 15 years ago when I was “emerging in the wake of Dave Matthew’s success.” It goes on to speak of file-sharing. Because on Apple Music, as far as my bio is concerned, it is still the year 2000.
I can’t easily edit this information and I can’t pick up the phone and call my contacts at iTunes and feel good about asking them to give me special treatment. Though I have contacts, I don’t even know what special treatment they could give me.
So a few days ago, I submitted a request through Apple Music’s support team about changing my bio and, as I suspected, today I learned that my only recourse to change my bio is to use a web form on All Music’s website and submit a request to have my information changed.
A web form with disclaimers encouraging me to not bug them while they wade through these requests and decide if they are worthy.
That means, that sometime, whenever they get around to it, my bio will get approved (or not) behind the apparently very busy wall of AllMusic.
And then it will hopefully get syndicated.
And then, one imagines, Apple will pick it up and put it on my artist profile.
And by then it’s either next week or next year. I have no way of knowing.
In the meantime, Apple wants me to trust my relationship with my fans to their platform.
Why Apple Music? Why Not______?
Amazon wants to sell you everything in the world. Google wants to give you everything in the world that you want and then sell ads against it. [^3]
Their intentions are so mis-aligned from mine that I view them as lost causes.
But Apple wants us to believe it is different. And I do believe they are. That they really do exist at the intersection of liberal arts and technology and value artists and creative types more deeply than any of these other companies. It’s in their DNA, as they would say.
I just know, in my DNA, that this is an “only at Apple” kind of problem.
The kind of thing that changes the world with it’s attention to detail and passionate execution and makes you feel like a kid again. [^4]
There have been some attempts to bring back liner notes with iTunes LPs and pdfs included in iTunes downloads over the years. This gives me a glimmer of hope that there is someone at Apple who shares my passion for this. But I’m beginning to lose hope.
Lest you think they couldn’t do this, please remember, Apple is the company that decided working with Google wasn’t in line with their core philosophy and so built a team to map the entire planet. They MAPPED THE FUCKING PLANET when they woke up one morning and decided to.
So there’s no way they can’t tackle this. But they need to want to.
I have no idea what’s stopping them or whether they plan to address this in a future update of Apple Music.
But I like to imagine a world with deep-linked album credits — not just who engineered, produced and played on the record, but going much further. Allowing the artist to thank people and bands for their help, to call out charities that they find meaningful, and for the user to experience all of it beautifully.
These "living liner notes" could be supplemented by a time capsule of the period spent working on the album you're listening to as documented by the artist themselves on Connect!
I can imagine artists adding information as it becomes relevant later.
You could build a whole user experience around liner notes deeply integrated into Apple Music and spur a whole new level of self-motivated music discovery. Human discovery by humans about humans.
A whole new generation of kids like us, opening up records, scouring them for details, seeking out connections only they could make, building a world that inspires them and all of us.
P.S If you’re ready to have a labor union that actually works for all of us, I don’t even know where to start, but let’s at least start that dialogue. It’s a long overdue conversation.
[^1] I quibble, but I would love to see stats on who on earth besides a few nerds like me ever knows to click that mysterious little dot button?
[^2] Other options — googling that artist and finding their homepage or wikipedia page. An artist’s homepage can be a good step, but is often short on details. Learning about an artist on Wikipedia is just plain sterile. An artist is distilled down to an encyclopedia article. Imagine the liner notes for “Paul’s Boutique” as a Wiki. Or here, just visit the “Paul’s Boutique” Wikipedia page. It’s interesting but academic. And only half of the people credited as “Personnel” on the record are linked to. Personally, I make sure my wikipedia page is embarrassingly complete because I want to empower my one fan out there who cares.
[^3] Spotify and Rdio are just as guilty in many ways, and I hope we can exert enough pressure that they’re inspired to innovate more here and include something akin to liner notes in their service. And, credit where it’s due, rdio gets closer and their professional album reviews help paint a more clear picture.
[^4] It’s in my DNA because I played Dark Castle on a Macintosh SE when I was in elementary school. I pranked called friends when TextEdit first got text-to-speech. I waited for Copeland. I have MacAddict issue #1. I know that because I started reading John Gruber when Daring Fireball would have sounded like cheat code for Nintendo 64. Because when I visited Apple’s campus for the first time I nearly shit my pants with excitement just to eat in the cafeteria. Because when I saw Steve Jobs sitting at the table next to me, I was too overcome to say anything and I cried when he passed away.
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