Photo Credit: Oliver Schusser for NMPAorg (YouTube) / CC by 3.0
Apple’s vice president and head of Apple Music, Oliver Schusser, says the service isn’t planning on raising its prices to meet its competitors.
Apple Music’s Oliver Schusser sat down for an interview with Music Week following the premiere of the F1 movie, where he expressed his excitement about future possibilities. Apple is aiming to expand creative opportunities for artists, including filmed documentaries and live performances, and DJ sets recorded in Spatial Audio.
“It feels like we’ve been in the music business for 25 years, if you go back to iPod and iTunes when digital music really started,” said Schusser, when asked how he felt about Apple Music’s role in streaming 10 years on. “10 years ago, we launched Apple Music. We’re super happy. We’ve always wanted Apple Music to be a service that’s for real music fans, because it’s made by real music fans.”
To that end, he says, Apple Music differs from its competition with a focus on quality. “We believe that the way music is displayed, the way metadata is shown—and we have very low [streaming] fraud—everything on the service is trying to be as premium as possible.”
“We’re very focused on music. Our competitors are running away from music, and they put podcasts and audiobooks and all sorts of other things into their services,” he said, seemingly calling out Spotify in particular, which has made a massive pivot into audiobooks and podcasts in recent years. “But we’re very, very focused on music.”
That’s part of the reason, he says, that Apple Music will never offer a free ad-supported tier. “We don’t understand why people think it’s a good idea to give away art for free. So we’re fundamentally against the idea of free music services. […] We’re the only service that doesn’t have a free service.”
“It’s crazy that 20 years into streaming, we have hundreds and hundreds of millions of people consuming every new album that’s out there for free. That’s not the way it should be; artists are unhappy with that, and I understand that,” he explains.
Apple Music’s competitors have raised their prices in recent years, which has led to an overall expectation that prices for these services will rise every 18 months or so. But Schusser says Apple Music’s focus is on providing great value—so despite being the first to raise its prices around two years ago, they have no plans for another increase anytime soon.
“I don’t really care what the music industry expects. We’re very focused on providing great value to our customers,” Schusser says. “A couple of years ago we put the price up. We were actually the first to put the price up. […] It was at a time when we had created Spatial Audio, which was a whole new listening experience, and it was a new audio format. We wanted to make sure we gave that to all subscribers, and that significantly increased the quality of the service overnight.”
Schusser feels that, by providing Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos to all subscribers, it’s as if the entire service was upgraded to a premium offering at a standard price. “It was actually something that only Apple can do, because it’s not like other people haven’t tried creating new audio formats.”
“What was special about Apple was we had the connection between hardware, software, and services. We wanted to create a standard that works on all headphones, at least all of our headphones, on all devices, and where people would hear the difference,” he continues. “And then we brought in Dolby.”
So what’s next for Apple Music? As executives continue to hype up the concept of “streaming 2.0” and new (more expensive) tiers, what does Apple Music have in the works for the next decade?
“Our challenge and opportunity is to make sure music continues to be as relevant as it’s ever been, and artists have a platform to express themselves, and we are at the forefront of that. And then we will use technology to make the service better. We think AI has incredible opportunities,” says Schusser. “Our focus will be on premium features, premium quality, focused on music and focused on artists.”
