The headlines of business media this summer about Apple Music was not what was probably expected in Cupertino. A streaming service Apple has attestable as “nightmare”, “complete disappointment” and “broken promise”. Even longtime fans wondered: “What went wrong?”.
Not the first time the Corporation stumbles about music, says Harvard Business Review. In 2010, Steve jobs offered the world Ping “music social network”, “Facebook and Twitter with iTunes”, and two years later this venture slowly closed. Analysts blamed Facebook in lack of cooperation, but the deeper roots of the problem — exactly for the same reason today beats with beat Apple Music.
Apple, like almost any organization in the twenty-first century, in a hurry to upgrade technology and corporate thinking has stalled. But today, before changing market, you need to change yourself from the inside out.
The digital revolution is first and foremost a new form of communication. For the first time in human history many can interact with so many in the world. Instead the target audience is the community, not to push clients, and to attract, Yes, they have and not clients, and co-authors.
Media companies and retailers too slow to adapt to change. They are used to build relationships for the sake of a deal at any price, and now I have to embed the transaction in the relationship. You’d think the organization in the sphere of high technologies should lead this hike, but it turns out far not always. Neither Apple nor Google have created an effective social network has failed, and Google+, and Ping, both because of the Corporation, acting in the old way, not able to differentiate the task to distribute the content from the exchange of social currencies.
Instagram, by contrast, have taken root, because the pictures are not the content, and the opportunity to Express themselves and socialize. Kevin SISTROM, one of the founders of Instagram, explained: “We are not interested in pictures as such, we perceive them as tweets or status”. Apple still can not break up with the settings of the first, successful days iTunes. Music is regarded as content that needs to be distributed, not as an experience, which I want to share. Not so important, music is downloaded to the device or it is possible to listen online there is another problem: Apple remains the Music channel for the transmission of content and became a platform for experience exchange, a meeting place for like-minded people, the catalyst for creativity.
How to turn music into social currency? The response from the company right under his nose — or rather, we wear it on the wrist or stick in our ears.
Imagine a concert or dance. The orchestra or the DJ starts the tunes, the crowd moves in unison. Watches or other gadgets reflect every movement and the beating heart, some gadgets catch even the temperature and humidity of the skin, measures the pressure. You look, and the creeps will learn to read.
This feedback, the biological reaction of the audience, synchronized with music and is placed in the cloud. It is possible to analyze the degree of emotional involvement, to detect individual peak experiences. Every song, every tune gets its own score with the emotional engagement of listeners.
After the concert or coming out of the club, the visitor automatically gets the list of touched his heart songs and those lines which aroused the strongest feeling. Bands and DJs now know what tunes hall jumps up. Clubs and event organizers know who to call to the public there was no one indifferent.
The same data can be received and according to the results of private listening. “Smart” headphones are able to measure heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rhythm. For example, if you are doing the music exercise, or run, or work on the bike — not proposales you faster, not whether the heartbeat quickens when we hear a cherished song? And behind the wheel — no singing, tapping fingers to the beat? When you sit over textbooks, perhaps some songs help to concentrate them under reduced respiratory rate and heart rate. In any case, the biometrics allows to estimate the strength of the emotional reaction and to determine the context, which it is due.
These peak musical experiences — subtle vibes — social networking be a natural reason for communication. Not so interesting to know what song the person downloaded in your device or listened to online, and not much more interesting than what he’d given her assessment. But it’s another thing to know what song people pritoptyvaya and priklepyvayut and Darts off, and even more interesting — to catch the very moment when music causes an emotional and physical reaction.
Apple has all the components to build a socio-economic system around musical experiences. Its iPhone, Apple Watche Beats and headphones — all the necessary devices that allow to measure peak experiences and link the content with emotional responses. Then Apple Music could become a platform on which peak experiences are used as social currency.
The company actively develops a similar ecosystem in healthcare. The main feature of the Apple Watch was the tracking parameters that are important for fitness. The company even collaborates with Nike and the Mayo clinic, HealthKit co-creating is “a Central platform to inform about the state of health” where consumers meet producers and physicians. But where is the similar MusicKit for musicians and their fans?
The philosopher Herbert Spencer called music the “language of feelings”. Jimmy e: owyn, the head of Apple Music, put a lot of effort to return music to a Central place in pop culture and the music of “return feeling”. According to him, he trusts more to the experts than to faceless algorithms, it looks for human companionship. Here only the communication is not between man and man, and between people and Apple.
A recent promotional campaign Apple Music filed as “instant service for creating mixtapes (collection of songs) from her boyfriend”. The idea is to create personalized digital mixtapes — just Shine. This is a highly effective social currency: a shared song collections immediately bring people together. Selecting songs, making a record, placing the disc, people show mutual interest, attention to each other and demonstrate their full compatibility.
But to strengthen human relationships require more. Let the experts select the content, the meaning given to it only people. What if to add to playlist, photos from social networks and a brief content of the songs? Or arranged by your heartbeat, which fixed the Apple watch? But to do it, you need to change the setting: audience and community, not content, and social currency. While Apple continues to focus on customer relationships and itself serves as a “boyfriend”: should not substitute lovers while composing these musical recordings, and encourage users to interact and share them.
The fate of Apple Music’s not over yet, but so far, her example inspiring. We see that the brand strength and technology, talent and capital is already enough to succeed in today’s market. Most of all, not enough new models of thinking that would help to see the opportunities right under my nose. And there will be too many to think about their customer relationships and too little about their relationship with each other — will come to face a familiar question: “What went wrong?”.
