Apple Music launched yesterday across all iOS devices. Trent Reznor, who came to Apple after the software giant acquired his employer, Beats, played a key role in designing the streaming service. He also premiered instrumental versions of Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile and With Teeth LPs through Connect, Apple Music's social aspect that allows artists to upload their own music and other content to the service.
Several hours after Apple Music launched, Pitchfork spoke with Reznor over the phone about his role in developing the service, his opinions on other services, and creating a curator-centric alternative to the digital “big box store” experience. As Reznor discussed the service, he didn’t focus on Apple Music's vast library available for on-demand streaming. He’s more excited to talk about Beats 1, the built-in radio station run by a small team of DJs and featuring shows hosted by various musicians and celebrities.
"It’s kind of a miracle to think that a device in your pocket can play pretty much any song that the world has ever created,” he says. "But I think now, the experience is what matters, and my experience with competitors has been less than optimal. I feel like I’m walking into a big box store where all the merchandise is in a cardboard box."
Pitchfork: What has your day-to-day involvement looked like for this project?
Trent Reznor: It’s kind of shifted over time. Initially it was a lot of sitting with Apple’s design team and some of the iTunes engineers, honing in on strategically and holistically what we were trying to pull off—what features mattered in terms of what we were trying to accomplish with Apple Music. It was a lot of design meetings and overall roadmap things. Then, it started to change into some other roles. In the last several months I’ve been a lot more involved with the messaging and marketing that’s come out—the way we were trying to engage artists and try to explain the service to them in a way that feels right and sits right with people.
Pitchfork: How has this experience with Apple been compared to your experience working with Beats?
TR: That’s interesting. I’ve always been a fan of Apple’s, and I think a lot of the frustration we ran into with Beats Music was trying to pull off something that really needed a budget and a head count and resources that were really beyond what we were cobbling together. Then you put something out in the world, and then you realize now you’ve got the burden of trying to convince people what it is and how to install it and then start the seemingly impossible task of expanding across the world, country by country.
I heard about Apple’s buyout of Beats after it was essentially happening. I didn’t know about the agenda any more than the person that read about it—if it was more about the electronics side or more about the Beats Music side. When I sat down with the people at Apple, I found a very respectful, collaborative environment that wanted to take some of the tentpoles that mattered to us at Beats Music, which really was trying to make an experience that didn’t feel like data. Something that felt organic and respectful to music rather than just, “We’re just delivering assets to your mobile device.” They treated music in a way that put an emphasis on curation and taste.
Personally, one of the things that interests me in this space as a fan is that consumption of music is radically different from when I was a kid. You had to make a choice of what you wanted to invest in. There were some good things about that. I listened to some records that I didn’t necessarily like at first, but I listened to them because it was all I had. It shaped the way I think about things. And now that access is ubiquitous and everybody has access, to me, that puts the burden on the service to make music enticing—different portals and entryways and rabbit holes. And what if that experience could be one that turns more people on to great music? I think that’s exciting.
Pitchfork: You’ve said that other services have felt “lacking.” Specifically, what sets Apple Music apart from its competitors?
TR: At the end of the day, every streaming service is kind of the same thing, right? They have essentially the same catalog, give or take a few songs. You go in, you get the same inventory. I think what’s been most surprising in the last few years as I’ve dabbled in this space and met more tech people—because I hadn’t been around them that much—is that you start to pick up on just how culturally different of a place a lot of those companies are coming from. I’m not saying that as a diss, but I’ve always been around people who have something to do with the arts where taste and feel was a virtue. I found in a lot of the tech world, it’s like speaking a different language. I mean, you see these products being launched and you’re like, “Who the fuck put that out? Didn’t they realize that it fucking sucks?” You know? Like a video game where it seems like no one tested it or wearable electronics—there’s shit where you can’t believe that it must have gone through several iterations before it wound up on a shelf.
Having access to all this music and the technology behind it, I’m very grateful that somebody figured out how to do that based on torrenting and other technology. It’s kind of a miracle to think that a device in your pocket can play pretty much any song that the world has ever created. That’s great. But I think now, the experience is what matters, and my experience with competitors has been less than optimal. I feel like I’m walking into a big box store where all the merchandise is in a cardboard box. I mean, it’s there, you can eat all you want. But it’s searching for a book in a card catalog versus a place where you walk in and leave kind of blown away by the stuff you didn’t realize you wanted when you went in there. You’re turned on to the experience of listening or participating or getting engaged.
As everyone has the foundation of technology and the library now, I think the experience is what matters. What we tried to do with Apple Music is make the experience around the catalog feel like people that love music have touched it in the various ways it gets presented to you: playlists that noticeably feel better, radio stations that were programmed by people, recommendations that feel less like a computer and more like someone made you a mixtape and you like their taste.
We thought, "Let’s include music that’s not in that catalog," so we brought in the Connect feature. We did a few things. We allowed a container where an artist can directly upload music or video that lives outside the paywall and is embeddable anywhere and controllable by the artist. They can funnel people into their world.
Pitchfork: That the Connect stuff can exist outside Apple Music’s ecosystem is a major departure from Tidal, for example, where exclusive content is only available behind a paywall.
TR: This was a thought that I’ve had, and there wasn’t any resistance to this: The idea that we’re going to be better by having exclusive content locked behind our walled garden—it reminds me of the terrible days of, “Here’s the CD’s Target version with two extra songs on it, and here’s the Walmart version.” What do you expect fans to do? Buy them all? It feels disingenuous and it’s a bummer. So we just wanted to make a place where if you’re an artist and you want to share something that’s more promotional—you’re not necessarily looking to get paid on it but you want people to hear it and have as wide a reach as possible—put it up here and it’s not locked into anything. You can embed it wherever. It’s not meant to just be over here behind this paywall.
Pitchfork: What’s the incentive for an artist to put their music up through Connect as opposed to a service like Bandcamp or SoundCloud?
TR: Well in the case of Bandcamp, which I’m not extremely familiar with, I’m certain at the end of the day that there’s a goal towards monetization—get your music aggregated out to people. In the case of what we’re doing with Connect, the thought there is empowerment of the artist—that they don’t have to go through a label or anything else. Fresh from the studio and into your ears, if you want. And it’s playing upon the behavior you see a lot right now where people would use SoundCloud, for example, to put stuff up basically just as a container where people can hear it. That’s the incentive behind this. You want something that’s not behind a paywall, that’s fresh, that’s not been ingested by a label or catalog? Throw it up.
The reach of Apple is impressive. Anybody that’s ever purchased anything from the iTunes Store, you have access to that reach as soon as you get verified. It’s a different audience of people you can have instant connection with. And that was really it—it’s just another tool. What we were thinking about a lot was primarily the inclusion of the artist into the place where the music’s being consumed. That’s the biggest miss, I think, with the competitors. I’m subscribing to several competitors now, and it’s like I’m walking into the store and seeing my stuff presented in a way that I had nothing to do with. I can’t touch it and I can’t affiliate my influence on it. It feels a bit disingenuous. We wanted to create a place where the people making the art could feel like they could have a center, and ultimately, monetization, and the ability to be provided with some tools that didn’t exist as elegantly as they do anywhere else. Right in that place where your catalog lives, add whatever you want without rules or limitations, engage your audience in a way that might create a fertile place to hang out and participate.
Pitchfork: Are you going to do your own radio show?
TR: You know, I don’t know. I heard a little bit of Josh Homme’s show the other day and I was thinking, “Man, I should’ve fuckin’ thought about this side of it.” I’ve been so busy thinking about keeping the cord plugged into the wall that I haven’t thought that much about it... I’m going to see what happens in the next couple months here.
But it’s been an exciting process, you know? I’ve got to say this: I’ve been pleasantly surprised, having spent a year now at Apple, to just see how willing to trust and embrace and take chances that they are not knowing what I’d find behind the curtain. I’ve always been a fan of Apple’s products as a company, but I didn’t know what it’s like to be on the inside. I’m surrounded by enthusiasm and support and a company that’s ready to take risks and allow, what I think, is risky good taste to be a fundamental part of what they’re trying to do. It’s pretty cool that the biggest company in the world feels that way. It feels good to me right now.
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via Evan Minsker
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