Apple Music has unveiled a new studio near its Culver City headquarters, an expansive 15,000-square-foot space the streaming service hopes will serve as an all-in-one creative hub where musicians can come for radio interviews, write and record new music, conduct photo shoots and film video content.
Apple Music Studios opens this summer and will serve as the home for some of Apple Music Radio’s marquee programming including the Zane Lowe Show. Apple didn’t disclose how much the studios cost to develop, but the construction and the tech in the building is significant. The aesthetic is very Apple: warm wood floors, sleek black walls, and pops of color. The building features two large radio studios decked out with specially made spatial audio speakers built into the ceilings. The rooms also feature customizable light and screen settings, as well as hidden cameras built directly into the walls. The studios are large enough to work both for interviews and intimate concert experiences for a small number of attendees.
“We want this to be an open house for artists, songwriters or any creator to come in, hang out and create content, connect with their fans or connect with other artists,” Apple Music’s top executive Oliver Schusser tells The Hollywood Reporter. “This is our interpretation of the intersection between technology and the arts.”
Aside from the radio studios, the building also has a 4,000-square-foot soundstage that can be used for live performances or screenings, a photo studio as well as edit bays for content. Fitting to Apple Music’s continued push to evangelize spatial audio on the platform, the studio also has a spatial audio mixing room on site.
One of the studios at Apple Music’s new studio space in Culver City. (Courtesy of Apple Music)
“We intentionally made it so it could be highly adaptable to any sort of creative,” Apple Music co-head Rachel Newman says. “It’s a blank space on purpose, so that an artist can come in and create whatever they want. Radio was always a front door for us to work closer with artists, and now they’ll be able to do so much more. Photography, writer’s rooms. We wanted the ability to scale and fit into any kind of vision the artist might have.”
Apple unveiled the studio Monday as the company celebrates exactly 10 years since Apple Music first launched back in 2015. Schusser says Apple developed the new space as the platform had “outgrown” its original studios as Apple Music’s content has become much more involved with video. The new space, Apple says, is far more accommodating for more types of video content when artists come in for collaborations.
Schusser says the studio reflects the company’s continued focus on fostering an active listening experience, recalling that when the service launched 10 years ago, his team was “worried that music in the streaming era would become a commodity.”
“There was a fear that customers would just press a button and play music in the background and that’d be it,” Schusser says. “That’s why we focused on Apple Radio. We wanted to build a music service for music fans, a platform where artists could express themselves and showcase their music since there’s not many platforms left where they can do that anymore. The studio expands on that.”
The Apple Music Logo in the lobby of Apple Music Studios in Culver City (Courtesy of Apple Music)
Natalie Eshaya, head of Apple Music Radio, says the new space offers reflects Apple Music Radio’s evolution in the years ahead to further expand beyond audio into wider content.
“The root of it is that traditional radio format, a host speaking to an audience and artists having a way to connect to their fans through radio. But I think where we’ve evolved things is, it’s not just audio, there’s a visual element in all the things we do.”
With Apple Music Studios unveiled, Apple Music also announced special programming for this week to celebrate 10 years of service. That kicks off this morning with Don’t Be Boring: The Birth of Apple Music Radio with Zane Lowe and Ebro Darden, which is airing on Apple Music Radio from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. PST. Apple will also be airing a special on 10 years of Apple Music until 4 p.m. PST.
Lowe and Darden will host a live show from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. today as well, featuring an unspecified lineup of artists who’ve “shaped the trajectory” of the platform.
Separately, starting July 1st, Apple Radio will also begin to showcase the 500 all-time most-streamed songs on Apple Music, finishing with the top 100 on July 5th. Apple Music users will also get access to an all-time replay feature, which will tell them their own individual most-streamed songs since they first joined Apple Music.
Art on the walls at Apple Music Studios (Courtesy of Apple Music)