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Bloomberg's Webb on Apple Revamping Its Music Service (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to Taking Stock with Kathleen Hayes and Pim
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  Speaker 1: Fox on Bloomberg Radio. Apple in the spot line today.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, the share prices down about one cent to
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  Speaker 1: nine four six cents a share. But given the news
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  Speaker 1: out on Apple today, you have to say, maybe it's
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  Speaker 1: holding up pretty well. Apple's planning to revamp its music
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  Speaker 1: service after the product was met with tepid reviews, and
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  Speaker 1: it lost a fight to keep the iPhone name exclusive
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  Speaker 1: to its product with a Beijing court. So a lot
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  Speaker 1: of going on, and then there's more signs at the
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  Speaker 1: smartphone market is sputtering. That's certainly not good for Apple.
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  Speaker 1: Joining us now from our Bay Area bureau San Francisco
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  Speaker 1: is it's also the home of Bloomberg. Point one I
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  Speaker 1: might add is Alex Webb, tech reporter for Bloomberg News.
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  Speaker 1: So Alex, let's start with the plan to revamp the
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  Speaker 1: music service. Boy, oh boy, they certainly took a wrong
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  Speaker 1: turn there. It seems it seems that way a year
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  Speaker 1: into the products, you've got to maybe give some Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: they've managed to grow it to the thirteen million users
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  Speaker 1: that's about a third size of Spotify, but it took
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  Speaker 1: Spotify eight years to get to the same level. So
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  Speaker 1: it's not an outright failure, but it has potential to
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  Speaker 1: be a hell of a lot better. And that's clearly
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  Speaker 1: why they are working very hard to try and rejig
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  Speaker 1: it and revamp it. And hopefully we'll see that well.
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  Speaker 1: Our sources telling us we'll see that products surface at
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  Speaker 1: their Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco next month. Alex
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  Speaker 1: is there a tale, maybe a novel in the going
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  Speaker 1: the coming and going of all of the executives who've
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  Speaker 1: been involved in this music project? I wonder if you
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  Speaker 1: could just tell us who the players are and Beat
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  Speaker 1: and bring it all together so it is a wide
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  Speaker 1: and varied cast of players. And that kind of speaks
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  Speaker 1: to the very problem with the product that there isn't
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  Speaker 1: one big figure dictating everything. You have. On the one side,
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  Speaker 1: the iTunes veterans, people who built the iTunes store. That's
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  Speaker 1: people like Robert Condrick and in the Apple l A office,
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  Speaker 1: Jeff Robin, who was an engineer built the original it
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  Speaker 1: tune store. And then they buy Beats, which was, you know,
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  Speaker 1: three billion dollar deal. They bring in people like Jimmy Ivying,
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  Speaker 1: a huge figure in the music industry, Trent Resina, who
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  Speaker 1: we know is a front amount of nine inch Nails,
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  Speaker 1: but have been heavily involved with the Beach live streaming service.
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  Speaker 1: And then there was a guy called Ian Rodgers who
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  Speaker 1: was sort of, I have some sources, really impressive guy
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  Speaker 1: in meetings, great ideas, took on other people's ideas. But
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  Speaker 1: the Apple iTunes people felt a bit flighted when Apple said,
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  Speaker 1: look at these great people we've hired. They kind of thought, well,
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  Speaker 1: we've done a pretty good job ourselves. And so there
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  Speaker 1: was a certain amount of tension between these two sides
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  Speaker 1: in the development of the product. So Alex quite important
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  Speaker 1: is it that Apple lost the fight to keep that
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  Speaker 1: iPhone name exclusive to its products in China, especially at
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  Speaker 1: a time where suddenly people just don't need to upgrade
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  Speaker 1: their iPhones the way they used to, certainly not in
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  Speaker 1: the United States. That's another thing that's hanging over the market,
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  Speaker 1: the stock market right now. When it comes to Apple,
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  Speaker 1: I think, in and all of itself, it's probably not
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  Speaker 1: a huge deal. You know, we're hearing Apple is going
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  Speaker 1: to probably appeal this um, but it speaks to a
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  Speaker 1: border trend and it was something that Carla can hinted
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  Speaker 1: that when he announced that he had divested his Apples stock,
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  Speaker 1: namely that things are not all plane sailing in China anymore. Um,
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  Speaker 1: it isn't, you know, untrammeled growth market for them. They
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  Speaker 1: are facing increasing problems here. We have the I phone issue,
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  Speaker 1: the branding issue. A couple of weeks ago, we heard
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  Speaker 1: that that movies and I books have been blocked or
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  Speaker 1: they've been told they can no longer sell movies and
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  Speaker 1: books through the iTunes store. So there's an element of,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I think probably power play on the Chinese
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  Speaker 1: side saying just remember whose boss. It's us. It's not you,
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  Speaker 1: the massive mega company. We are the people controlling our
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  Speaker 1: own market. Thank you very much for joining us. Alex
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  Speaker 1: Aware but Berg technology reporter joining us from San Francisco,
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  Speaker 1: talking about Apple shares of Apple down ninety seven cents
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  Speaker 1: right now and twenty one cents