{"id":1896894,"date":"2026-04-22T18:03:43","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T15:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1896894"},"modified":"2026-04-22T18:03:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T15:03:43","slug":"apple-music-exec-talks-ai-i-really-need-the-content-providers-and-the-labels-to-take-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1896894","title":{"rendered":"Apple Music Exec Talks AI: \u2018I Really Need the Content Providers and the Labels to Take Responsibility\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Oliver-schusser-2026-press-apple-music-Mateo-Vergara-Billboard-1800.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n
\n

\n\t\t\tTrending on Billboard\t\t<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tWhat makes music streaming services distinct from one another? In the early years, the answer was easier. Back then, exclusive releases were common. Jay-Z, for example, made that a core reason to subscribe to Tidal. Apple Music had its own special drops, including Frank Ocean\u2018s Endless, <\/em>the visual album he used as a smart tool to quickly fulfill his label contract before dropping the self-released Blonde<\/em>, also on Apple Music, one day later.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\"In<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tApple Music Introduces Tagging for AI Songs, Its First Regulation on AI\u00a0Use\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

    \n
  • \n
    Kristin Robinson<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • <\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    \n\tAfter that, however, exclusive drops have largely ceased to exist, forcing top competitors like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and others to search for new differentiating factors. Spotify, for example, bolstered its service with valuable other offerings, like podcasts and audiobooks. It also launched a number of shareable music discovery concepts like Daylist, Wrapped and AI DJ. Apple Music expanded radio shows from personalities, like Zane Lowe. It also leaned into its standing as one of the world\u2019s biggest technology and hardware companies to create features, like Spatial Audio, that encourages both a high quality streaming experience and a reason to try their myriad of headphone offerings.<\/p>\n

    \n\tStill, it remains a never-ending challenge for music streamers to find ways to stand out from the pack. On this week\u2019s episode of\u00a0Billboard\u2019s On the Record\u00a0<\/em>podcast, vp of Apple Music, Apple TV+, Sports and Beats\u00a0Oliver Schusser<\/strong> joins to talk about why he thinks Apple Music is unlike any other service.<\/p>\n

    \n\tWatch or listen to the full episode of\u00a0On the Record<\/em>\u00a0below on YouTube, or check it out on other podcast platforms\u00a0here.<\/p>\n

    \n
    \n
    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

    I want to talk about exclusives. That was once a differentiating factor in streaming, but it isn\u2019t anymore \u2014 which is so fascinating to me. Back in the day Jay-Z was doing a lot of that with Tidal. Apple Music released Frank Ocean\u2019s Endless<\/em> visual album, and then 24 hours later he followed up with Blonde<\/em> also on Apple Music<\/strong> \u2014<\/p>\n

    \n\tYes, the labels decided not to do exclusives anymore. The reason why I regret that, by the way, is because I think there\u2019s a real danger that an album released these days isn\u2019t as special anymore as it used to be. And you have a few artists like Taylor Swift or Harry Styles who can make it special because of who they are. But in general, I think the Friday new release day doesn\u2019t really have the same magic [as] a new release day, I don\u2019t know, 10 or 20 years ago. And I do actually think that when [streaming services] have something exclusively, they go the extra mile to shout from the rooftop on that particular release. But it is what it is. I can\u2019t change it. There are a lot of things I don\u2019t like in the industry that I can\u2019t really change.<\/p>\n

    So, what\u2019s another thing in the music industry that you don\u2019t like? <\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n\tI\u2019m sure you\u2019ve heard me say this: I think \u201cfree\u201d was a terrible idea. Apple Music is the only service that doesn\u2019t have a free tier, and believe it or not, we are really proud of that. <\/p>\n

    I do imagine that is tough for customer acquisition, especially in certain markets where there\u2019s not a lot of consumer buying power, but tell me about your philosophy behind that. <\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n\tFirst of all, we really look at music like art\u2026 We think when an artist spends nine months in a studio to make a piece of [incredible] work, no one in the world should think it\u2019s okay to give that away for free. And if you look at \u2014 I don\u2019t know if you watched [Severance<\/em>], which was like, at the beginning of the year, the biggest and hottest TV show on the planet \u2014 the only way to watch [Severance<\/em>] was, you have to sign up for Apple TV+. I mean, we have a free trial, so you can binge it in the first week, technically. But you can\u2019t just go anywhere on the internet and consume all the shows for free. The same story, by the way, could apply to any Netflix or any Disney show. I think it\u2019s not the right thing for songwriters and artists to just say, you know what, we\u2019re going to give this away for free \u2014 especially with the very little monetization that artists and songwriters are going to get in return.<\/p>\n

    In case there\u2019s someone listening who doesn\u2019t understand this \u2014 for free tiers, it\u2019s really an ad-supported tier actually. They do have royalty rates, but those rates are just much lower. <\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n\tYes, and it\u2019s widely reported what the revenues are in that model. I think that\u2019s the first problem. The second problem is more of a business problem, in my view: the fact that all paid services have to compete with free means, at the end of the day, not enough people are paying, because they can get it for free, and the paid services can\u2019t actually charge the correct price for the service because they\u2019re always competing with free\u2026 <\/p>\n

    \n\tWhy do so many more people subscribe to a video streaming service than to a music streaming service?\u2026 Because you can\u2019t get any of that content for free \u2014 they\u2019re not competing with free. Video is not offered for free. In fact, when they have an ad [tier], they actually charge money for the ad [tier]. But music is odd, which \u2014 by the way, in the early days when we were coming off of file sharing and [Napster] was a hit, we were [building something new] \u2014 that might have been a good idea. But 15 years later, we still need to give away art for free. I think that\u2019s a bad decision.<\/p>\n

    I feel like Apple Music is in an incredible position, though, because there are so many other facets to Apple. It gives you a lot of freedom to play with Apple Music. [A company like] Apple [can] afford to not have a free tier to their music service, but maybe something like a Spotify \u2014 that\u2019s relying on streaming as its only source of income<\/strong> \u2014 can\u2019t do that. <\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n\tI don\u2019t want to comment on any of our competitors, but if you look at them in aggregate, the monetization of [a] free service is so poor and so little. It\u2019s not like it\u2019s paying the bills for them. I would argue it\u2019s the cheapest marketing mechanism in the world, where the labels have given everyone the right to basically do free marketing \u2014 like, take all our content and use it for marketing and then upsell.<\/p>\n

    How often do conversations about your hardware products [like AirPods] come into play when you\u2019re developing new products at Apple Music [like high fidelity listening and Spatial Audio]?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n\tTo the consumer, the magic really happens when the hardware, the software, and services talk to each other and build groups of great experiences. And I actually think that spatial audio, and the work we did with Dolby Atmos, is almost one of the best examples of it. <\/p>\n

    \n\tIf you look at audio, changing audio standards are hard. And if you look back over like 60 years, there\u2019s only really been mono [and then eventually stereo]. [At Apple Music] we wanted to create a new standard with two distinctive criteria. One: we thought it\u2019s important that people \u2014 general people, fans \u2014 can notice the difference. And number two: we wanted it to work on as many, if not all, devices. Not just Apple devices, but just in general. So, lots of people said lossless is the answer. I heard this from record labels: \u2018You gotta do lossless.\u2019 But what they didn\u2019t notice is that lossless actually doesn\u2019t work over Bluetooth. So, when you have a wireless connection, lossless doesn\u2019t actually work. And in the days of AirPods and wireless headphones, the vast majority of people didn\u2019t have wires. So there were lots of people out there not even noticing that.<\/p>\n

    I do agree that most average people can\u2019t really hear the difference with lossless. <\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n\tCorrect. My second point is: honestly, if we did an anonymous [blind] test on just an iPhone with headphones \u2014 and you and I work in the industry, and I assume you like sound as much as I do \u2014 I can tell you most fans wouldn\u2019t be able to tell the difference. But that\u2019s what we did with spatial audio. And this required really a collaboration \u2014 not just [with Apple], but with lots of people. We worked with Dolby on creating [sound that comes] not from two sides, but really from everywhere. And it actually worked on pretty much all devices, all headphones, all of our [products], on iPhone, on Mac, but also on pretty much any other device. [There was] one downside: there were only roughly 5,000 songs in the world that had already been mixed and mastered in [spatial] audio. So, we [had] to go and upgrade all the studios in the world and also educate the sound engineers on what this new canvas looked like.<\/p>\n

    You recently released your first guidance as to how you would treat AI-generated music coming to Apple Music. Apple now allows labels and distributors to disclose AI use in songs. How much AI music are you really seeing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n\tWhen you look at our monthly intake, more than a third of what we get today is actually what we would say is 100% AI [music]. We have developed \u2014 and we\u2019ve never talked about this \u2014 but we\u2019ve developed technology in-house that would allow us to exactly see what music people are delivering us, what AI [model] it is and all that. That\u2019s obviously important to know so you can analyze when something\u2019s come in. Now, the reality is, the usage of the AI music on Apple Music is really tiny. I\u2019m rounding but its below 0.5% of usage. We\u2019re just at the beginning here. What is really tricky is when fraud comes to play. As I\u2019ve said we are obsessed about the quality of the Apple Music experience. We have very high customer satisfaction. We\u2019ve got the lowest churn in the industry. People that subscribe love the product, and we want to get rid of fraud.<\/p>\n

    How have you dealt with fraud so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n\tThis has been a 20-year journey because there was fraud, obviously, in iTunes already. We invest way more than anyone else in reducing and eliminating fraud\u2026 We implemented a fraud penalty four years ago where if we catch someone, then we actually take the money and put it back in the pool. We need to monitor AI music because there\u2019s a correlation between AI and fraud. This is one of the reasons why we just doubled the fraud penalty for everyone this year. The good news is our fraud penalty works incredibly well. We\u2019ve seen a 60% reduction sort of over time in fraud, just because of the penalty.<\/p>\n

    Do you have an issue with users uploading AI music in general on Apple Music, assuming it isn\u2019t being fraudulently streamed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n\tI\u2019ve said repeatedly to all the CEOs and presidents of the [music companies] there needs to be an industry consortium where they come together and discuss what is AI. And by the way, that can\u2019t just be corporates. You need to have artists and songwriters in the room as well. Because there\u2019s nothing wrong with artists and songwriters using AI even 100% but someone needs to then decide, well, what is AI? What\u2019s not AI?<\/p>\n

    \n\tThis is just an early step, but we\u2019ve put it on the content providers, labels and distributors, to say, \u2018hey, we want you to tell us when you\u2019re using AI.\u2019 We\u2019ve created basically AI flags.<\/p>\n

    One thing I was concerned about when I saw that announcement was \u2014 doesn\u2019t this just incentivize people to lie?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n\tWell, first of all, you should know that every label in the world is delivering AI, [even if] they might not know about it. They themselves also need to develop tools to understand [the scope of AI use]\u2026 We have a bunch of other things we\u2019re going to do over the course of the near future, but I really need the content providers and the labels to take responsibility.<\/p>\n

    \"Billboard<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

    [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/pro\/apple-music-exec-talks-ai-billboard-on-the-record\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Oliver-schusser-2026-press-apple-music-Mateo-Vergara-Billboard-1800.jpg?w=1024″] Trending on Billboard What makes music streaming services distinct from one another? In the early years, the answer was easier. Back then, exclusive releases were common. Jay-Z, for example, made that a core reason to subscribe to Tidal. Apple Music had its own special drops, including Frank Ocean\u2018s Endless, the visual album […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,226],"class_list":["post-1896894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-billboard-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1896894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1896894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1896894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1896894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}