Human curation matters a lot to Jimmy Iovine. In a new interview with Wired UK, the Beats co-founder and one of the major forces behind Apple Music went in-depth on the importance of human curation building a music service that's beyond what he calls a utility.
But going beyond music for a moment, Iovine noted that curation could be of tremendous use in other mediums. In particular, he mentions television, and the frustration of modern set-top boxes, that offer no help in finding something to watch.
From Wired UK:
We want to watch movies. Sit down with your girlfriend or a bunch of friends and try to find a movie online. That box helps you none -- it doesn't help. You're on your own. And eventually that will catch them unless somebody digs in and really helps the customer. And entertainment needs that, it needs to live and breathe.
TV is an area of great interest to Apple, and the company is currently said to be working on not only the next version of their Apple TV set-top box, but a streaming TV service as well. It could be that content curation may play a major role in the latter, much as it does in Apple Music today. And it should be noted that Iovine was one of the forces behind landing Apple's exclusive HBO Now deal.
Turning back to music, Iovine spoke about Connect, the social aspect of Apple Music, and how Apple will build the service out gradually.
"We have to prove [Connect's value to artists], and we will slowly prove that. That will be the piece of the service that comes along last, or later, and we have some real plans," he tells WIRED. "We're building it out a lot more, it needs a lot of technical work as well. But we believe we'll get there and it'll be a great place for artists to communicate and with a lot of independence and freedom to do what they want to do. But we're still building it."
Iovine seems to be making the U.K. media rounds, having also recently spoken to the London Evening Standard. This follows the news that Apple Music has gained 11 million free trial sign-ups in the first five weeks.
Source: Wired UK
