Tomas Chlebek More Life, Drake's new music project, has been more successful on Apple Music than anywhere else. How is it possible?
Drake tags More Life for a playlist, although in practice it is probably a collection of songs that did not fit on a studio album views from the previous year. For that album Apple had exclusive rights for a period of time and it has exceeded 250 million views in a week.
Na More Life Apple did not have exclusive rights, but the record company Republic Records announced that Apple Music exceeded 300 million plays in a week. Ed Sheeran's album currently has the most streams (375 million) in its first week on a single streaming service Divide in collaboration with Spotify.
But while Spotify has 100 million users, Apple Music has only 20 million. In addition, in the first 24 hours they collected tracks from More Life on Apple Music, nearly 90 million plays, compared to 33 million plays Divide for the same period of time.
Drake used SoundCloud as the main distribution platform for singles before partnering with Apple - which has been struggling financially since Drake's move to Apple's Beats 1 radio station. Beats 1, on the other hand, has become the most popular radio station in the world and has gained a very important position as a free component of Apple Music.
Drake has had his own OVO Sound Radio show there since the launch of the radio, where he presents new singles and albums. It was presented in the same way More Life, with Jimmy Iovine, one of the main people working on Apple Music, saying that the audience for that episode of the show was equivalent to American TV stations.
The paid streaming service also benefits significantly from this popularity. Apple's vice president of apps and content, Robert Kondrk, likened the relationship between Beats 1 and Apple Music to an amusement park — once a user has Apple Music running and is listening to a show on Beats 1, they will naturally move on to the next attraction in the form of paid content from the streaming service. Drake further contributes to this natural state of maintaining a constant soundscape through the composition and production of his latest musical projects, which are more focused on providing interesting musical backdrops than hits.
Beats 1 host Zane Lowe said Drake was able to turn new music releases into cultural events again on OVO Sound Radio: "When I hear [More Life] coming out like that, I'm transported to the same place that I hope millions of other people, which means I'm listening to him while watching the reactions on social media and getting messages from my friends all over the world."
Jimmy Iovine added that it's essential for Apple Music not to be just a utility (an app that makes it easy to listen to music), and working with artists like Drake helps them avoid that: “These services can't be utilities, that's not enough. It has to be—actually, it has to make music a verb—it just has to move. And that's what we're trying to do.”
I can't help but this film conversation between two classics is the first thing that comes to mind when reading similar apple PRs lately.
D: “Do you know what that means? This means that we are one step ahead of them again."
P: "Do you think it will be enough?"
I tried to remove as much "PR" as possible from the source article and focus more on identifying the reasons why Apple Music is able to generate such high play counts. I think the influence of free Beats 1 as a gateway to a premium streaming service is a legitimately interesting phenomenon, unique in the world of streaming services.
And won't the fact that it could not be played anywhere else in the first week other than some Beats 1 radio station be a reason for the high number of plays? And when you compare it with "ES - Divide". I couldn't find that information, so I'll ask: "Was ES-Divide only streamed on Spotify for the first week(s)?"
Maybe it's an interesting phenomenon for someone (Beats1), but free Spotify as a gateway to
premium streaming services are much more interesting in my opinion. By the way, back to the original question: "More Life, Drake's new music project, has been much more successful on Apple Music than anywhere else. How is it possible?"
More Life was indeed first heard on Beats 1, but then became available on both Apple Music and Spotify at the same time. On Spotify it generated approx. 61 million plays on the first day, on Apple Music 90 (see https://www.macrumors.com/2017/03/20/drake-more-life-apple-music-record/)
No, Divide was not exclusively available on Spotify.
The bottom line with Beats 1 is that as live radio it can (and does) function as a space for the artist to directly address the audience and has the potential to create cultural events where all radio listeners hear the same thing in the same context.
I can't help myself, but this artificial harassment of a specific artist just doesn't suit me, music is such an incredibly specific matter for each individual. I myself use Apple Music because Apple itself was close to me. Personally, I don't understand the hysteria surrounding this performer at all and I bet that in five years a dog will not bark at him. Around Apple Music, it seems from the outside that it is the distribution of that gentleman and maybe some of the other artists.
Who is Drake?