Apple wants its relationship with music to go beyond the screen and headphones. The company has presented Apple Music Hall, its own concert hall in London, a venue for 600 people that combines live performances, audio and video recording, broadcasts and content production for Apple Music from the same space.
The room is located inside Battersea Power Station, the historic building on the banks of the Thames where Apple has its British headquarters. Its opening is scheduled for September 28 and marks Apple Music’s entry into a field that allows the platform to simultaneously strengthen its relationship with artists and fans through in-person experiences and content that can then reach a global audience.
Apple is committed to having its own infrastructure to produce concerts and audiovisual material from its ecosystem
The movement also acquires interest in the context of competition between music platforms. The relationship with artists is expanding beyond the distribution of their songs: Spotify, for example, has introduced Fresh Finds Forward, a program that offers emerging artists free time in recording studios, early access to tools and support for tours and content. Apple is now committed to having its own infrastructure capable of producing concerts and audiovisual materials from its ecosystem.
Apple Music Hall is conceived as a small format room in front of large music venues. It has capacity for 600 attendees and a stage almost 12 meters wide, but both the stands and the stage configuration can be modified depending on the needs of each artist. It is possible to reduce the capacity, propose a traditional arrangement or place the musician in a more circular configuration surrounded by the public.
The venue also incorporates a Spatial Audio system made up of 48 speakers, distributed to offer an immersive experience during performances.
But a good part of the differential proposal is behind the scenes. Apple has built two professional recording and mixing studios that allow you to record each performance in multitrack and subsequently work on the result in Spatial Audio. Added to this is infrastructure to connect 16 or more cameras, along with parallel recording via iPhone, and a control room designed to produce the broadcasts.
The idea is that a single action can generate different results. An artist can give a concert to 600 people and leave the venue with a Spatial Audio recording, a mix ready for broadcast and a multi-camera video. The intellectual property of that material belongs to the artist.
The performances may also be broadcast globally, so that the digital scale expands the reach of a venue that is small. Apple thus combines the physical exclusivity of an intimate concert with the international distribution capacity of Apple Music.
The design maintains elements of Battersea Power Station’s original architecture, such as brick walls, arches and bronze balconies. The lobby incorporates large glass surfaces with views towards the building and the Thames.
The opening means recovering from another perspective Apple’s historical relationship with live music. The company itself remembers the journey that began with the iPod and continued later with the iTunes Music Festival, which organized concerts in London for years before disappearing in 2017.
“Apple’s love of music dates back to the company’s beginnings, from the launch of the iPod to the historic iTunes Music Festival and the launch of Apple Music”said Oliver Schusser, Vice President of Apple Music. For the manager, the new venue expands the company’s commitment to artists, fans and live music.
In addition, the project allows Apple to participate in more stages of the relationship between the artist and his audience: it hosts the performance, provides the infrastructure to produce it, can distribute it digitally and generates additional content around the musician. And the physical space reinforces a strategy that Apple Music has been developing for some time around editorial and audiovisual content, from interviews and premieres to performances and its own programs. The new facility now provides a permanent infrastructure from which to produce this type of materials.
Apple has also created a separate website for Apple Music Hall from which it will communicate upcoming concerts and ticket availability. At the moment the first artists who will perform at the venue have not been announced.
More info: Apple Music Hall
