Turning back the clock to 2015, it will mostly be remembered as the year Adele made an easy-listening, generation-uniting album (25) destined for the history books. It was also the year of Kendrick Lamar’s Molotov-cocktail-hurling hip-hop in To Pimp a Butterfly. The Weeknd redefined the meaning of an R&B auteur with Beauty Behind the Madness. And then there was the arrival of Apple Music, a streaming service that put the human touch left, right, and centre.
At a time when music distribution was fragmented, Apple Music tried to create a complete experience for fans. There was a need for a space where music was treated less like digital bits and more like art — with a deep sense of respect for the artiste and how their music was discovered.
Even after a decade, Apple Music continues to hold its course at a time when most rival streaming services have become more about selling audiobooks and advertisements.
More importantly, competition is trying to attract listeners by giving music away for nothing... zilch. How can art be given away for free? Apple looks at music as art, and even after all these years, they don’t have a free tier — rightly so.
Apple has been in the music business for far longer than 10 years. Think of how iTunes and the iPod reshaped the music industry. With Apple Music, the company has always been focussed on quality — from how music is presented, how lyrics are displayed, to how it all sounds.
Decades ago, the move from mono to stereo felt like a leap. So does Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos, an advanced sound technology that Apple uses to create immersive, three-dimensional audio experiences.
Earlier this year, Apple unveiled its “most ambitious creative project to date”: a brand-new, state-of-the-art studio space in Los Angeles dedicated to artiste-driven content, innovation in audio, and deeper fan connection.
No wonder musicians like Armaan Malik are happy working with Apple Music. He said: “Working with Apple Music has been an amazing experience! Seeing my music reach audiences worldwide through their platform — cutting across demographics, cultures, and borders — is a beautiful reminder of the universal power of sound and storytelling.”
Apple Music became globally available on June 30, 2015, and the focus of the service remains music instead of trying to be a social network Picture: Mathures Paul
Tenth anniversary or the eleventh... or the twentieth, Apple continues to pump new features into Apple Music. There’s always something fresh to help it retain the innovation crown for the next 10 years.
New features keep coming
Auto Mix is one of the new features creating quite a storm. Auto Mix can seamlessly blend one song into another, complete with beat-matching and crossfading. Once Apple Music detects what’s currently playing and what the outro is like, the Auto Mix feature steps in. Towards the end of the song, mixing begins — the outro blends into the intro of the next track. It’s not just about BPM-based transitions; there’s audio finesse, complete with high-pass and low-pass filters. It may even sound like live-streaming a DJ set with all your music. It’s accurate, especially when you play tracks from a similar genre. The feature can kick in even if there are 20–30 seconds left of a song, if it senses a long outro and a long intro to the next.
The lyrics feature on Apple Music is the best among all streaming platforms. In most songs, you can sing the lyrics exactly in sync with the musician. Taking things a step further, Apple Music now offers Lyrics Translation, allowing users to understand the words of their favourite songs, and Lyrics Pronunciation, which enables them to sing along even when the lyrics are in another language. The features use machine learning to translate lyrics — with fine-tuning from language experts — to ensure the emotion, cultural context, and lyrical intent are fully preserved. More languages are rolling out within the next year.
File picture of Apple Music being used on iPhone 16 Pro Max Picture: The Telegraph
A popular feature on the service is Apple Music Sing, which allows users to sing along to millions of songs with real-time, beat-by-beat lyrics. You can sing along by simply adjusting the volume of a song’s vocals, or for more fun, use your iPhone as a mic that amplifies your voice through your TV. You can also use your iPhone as a Continuity Camera to see yourself singing onscreen along with lyrics and visual effects.
Space for musicians
Recently, Apple Music unveiled a new state-of-the-art studio space in Los Angeles. Designed with artistes in mind, it includes a 4,000-square-foot soundstage for live performances, multi-cam shoots, fan events, and screenings; a dedicated Spatial Audio mixing room outfitted with a 9.2.4 PMC speaker system; a photo and social-media lab; an edit room and green room for real-time content creation; and private isolation booths for songwriting, podcasting, and one-on-one interviews.
The Los Angeles studio will anchor a global network of creative hubs already active in New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, and Nashville, with more coming soon.
There was a touch of India at the launch during a day-long global artiste takeover. Among the six acts was Punjabi superstar Diljit Dosanjh, who, in conversation with Zane, exclusively revealed the release date for his new album Aura.
Sound quality
At the heart of Apple Music is sound quality. The service has always been music-focussed, while Spotify tends to be all over the place.
Songs in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos feel as if they’re playing all around you. On top of that, lossless audio preserves every detail of the original recordings. Lossless audio matters. Most compression techniques lose some amount of data from the source file, but lossless compression preserves all of it. Apple developed its own lossless audio technology — the Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC). In addition to AAC, the entire Apple Music catalogue is encoded using ALAC in resolutions ranging from 16-bit/44.1kHz (CD quality) up to 24-bit/192kHz.
Apple Music offers a catalogue of over 100 million songs, expertly curated playlists, and the best artiste interviews, conversations, and global premieres via Apple Music Radio.
Human curation
To make the listener experience stand out, Apple Music uses a secret ingredient: Human curation. Apple Music curates 30,000 playlists crafted by some of the world’s best music tastemakers. While AI and Apple Intelligence are important, there has never been any compromise on the human touch.
Locally, Apple Music has a strong playlist ecosystem across multiple languages — Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, and Bengali — spanning genres like Bollywood, pop, hip-hop, dance, and more.
To maximise the scale of playlists, there’s a dive into moods and activities like Romance, Chill, Dance, Workout, and decades such as ’90s Bollywood Essentials. Then there are artiste-led playlists such as Essentials, Love Songs, Deep Cuts, Sing, Chill, Producers, and The Songwriters.
A unique Indian element is Shaadi Mubarak, a one-of-a-kind curated cultural moment soundtracking the great Indian wedding. The campaign features 20-plus playlists in Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu, covering ceremonies, artiste-curated playlists, music videos, and popular wedding albums — running throughout the entire wedding season.
Artistes at the centre
Apple Music offers artistes a stage through multiple programmes, both editorial and offline. Up Next India is an editorial campaign celebrating artistes who could become stars soon. Nearly 60 musicians have featured since its inception in 2021, including hip-hop star Hanumankind, a year before his global breakout Big Dawgs; Hindi hip-hop superstars Seedhe Maut, King, and Yashraj; and pop artistes Frizzell D’souza, Kavya, and Anoushka Maskey, who now play packed festival stages.
Apple has a new studio space in Los Angeles dedicated to artiste-driven content, innovation in audio and deeper fan connection
In 2024, Karan Aujla was chosen as a global Up Next artiste — the first Indian to join Apple Music’s global initiative geared towards identifying, showcasing, and elevating rising talent.
More than just Apple Stores
Apple continues to open retail stores in India, beginning with Apple BKC in Mumbai (in 2023). At these stores, Apple brings musicians to interact with crowds — sometimes even sharing the process behind making music. Artistes who have taken the stage for these sessions include Armaan Malik, Shekhar Ravjiani, Lisa Mishra, Prateek Kuhad, Amit Trivedi, Kayan, Rashmeet Kaur, and Mali.
Apple Music Radio
A unique aspect of Apple Music is Apple Music Radio — a 24×7 radio offering within the app. It’s home to in-depth interviews, premieres, and more. Global head of radio Zane Lowe has interviewed artistes like Karan Aujla, Prateek Kuhad, and Badshah. Some artistes have also turned hosts: Armaan Malik helmed a six-episode show called Only Just Begun Radio, while Punjabi producer Ikky hosted Punjabi Takeover Radio, tracing the genre’s journey from the state of Punjab to global stages like Coachella.
(Left to right) Jonita Gandhi, Armaan Malik and Anuv Jain
A reminder of Steve Jobs
Although Apple Music is celebrating 10 years, the company has always been focussed on music. Steve Jobs often fell back on the words and music of the Beatles on stage while talking about the company he co-founded with Steve Wozniak. From the time he played I Should Have Known Better while introducing the iPod (humming along and saying “I’m dating myself”), to using Let It Be during a demo of iTunes or quoting Two of Us in interviews, he thrived on the music of the Fab Four... and his other great love, Bob Dylan.
Jobs’s early-2000s success with the iPod offered relief to Napster-hating record labels. The iTunes Music Store, launched in 2003, made song purchases fast and easy. Soon, Apple was selling millions — then billions — of songs through iTunes.
Apple Music ensures the company continues to innovate in the music space. When Apple launched its first store in India, CEO Tim Cook showcased how central music is to the company. He met musician Mali (Maalavika Manoj), and they struck up an insightful conversation highlighting Cook’s love for connecting with the creative community. Mali brought up the iPod — how it sparked a revolution in her head when she was young. Packed with music that opened her mind to possibilities, the iPod took her closer to realising her calling. Of course, she didn’t know that one day Tim Cook would be listening to her songs and asking when her unreleased music would finally see the light of day.
The CEO asked how deep she was into Logic Pro and plugins — to which Mali responded with the excitement of a child in a toy store. She then explained how Apple products help shape her music.
Try it today
If you’re excited about Apple Music, there are several plans to choose from. Individual Plan: ₹119 per month for one user; Family Plan: ₹179 per month for up to six people; Student Plan: ₹59 per month for eligible students; and Apple One Individual: ₹195 per month, including Apple Music, Apple TV+, Arcade, and iCloud storage.