As I have previously expressed, I don’t totally agree with many of my colleagues in radio industry who are criticising Apple‘s venture in radio – Beats 1 – for the lack of innovation. I admit I probably expected from Apple a less linear radio experience, like James Cridland says. But could Beats 1 become a big player in internet radio?
In one of my first posts about Apple Music I said I believe it’s not a revolutionary product what brings disruption, learning is. And by doing radio, Apple is learning radio. They have the capability, the resources and the drive to turn that learning into actual disruption in the radio industry in future iterations.
That, and more, also suggests Glenn Peoples in an interesting article on Billboard.com. Glenn puts it in nicer words:
Internet-savvy people have fallen head over heels for old-school monoculture. A week into this grand experiment, it looks like Apple could one day be a serious player in Internet radio.
Wall Street seems to have taken notice. Investors are likely to believe a strong Apple Music could affect other streaming services. Accordingly, shares of Pandora dropped 14.9 percent in the 19 trading days since being introduced during the WWDC keynote on June 9. Other than the announcement and launch of Apple Music, no event or events stand out as an obvious cause for this decline.
Beats 1 staff might often sound like making tons of mistakes, doing crazy things and being irresponsibly unconventional through our traditional radio guys’ eyes. Are they simply having fun? Playing with the new toy? Probably. Let’s not underestimate their disruption power just because of that.