Bruce Springsteen today sat down with Apple executive Eddy Cue for an interview at the SoHo Apple Store in New York City. The interview focused mainly on Springsteen’s new memoir “Born to Run,” which was released earlier this week.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Apple’s Eddy Cue goes on the record to discuss the new Apple TV’s future, the company’s entertainment ambitions with Apple Music and TV shows, as well as its competitors and partners. The piece is a bit of an overview bio on the SVP of Internet Software and Services at the start, but Cue also addresses rumors Apple is looking to get into the TV business itself…
Yet again, Apple CEO Tim Cook is in attendance at the Sun Valley media conference in Idaho this year. Cook has attended the event over the past few years, last year keeping close with fellow tech executives including Bill Gates, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, and Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann.
Here’s an interesting excerpt from an ESPN article on how LeBron James inspired his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers to a comeback upset over [Eddy Cue’s] Golden State Warriors in the 2016 NBA Championship. As a native of Cleveland, this is particularly interesting to me:
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Update: A YouTube spokesperson responded to us with the following statement: The overwhelming majority of labels and publishers have licensing agreements in place with YouTube to leave fan videos up on the platform and earn revenue from them. Today the revenue from fan uploaded content accounts for roughly 50 percent of the music industry’s YouTube revenue. Any assertion that this content is largely unlicensed is false. To date, we have paid out over $3 billion to the music industry – and that number is growing year on year.
Nine Inch Nails frontman and Apple Music exec Trent Reznor has told Billboard that YouTube is built on stolen content:
Personally, I find YouTube’s business to be very disingenuous. It is built on the backs of free, stolen content and that’s how they got that big. I think any free-tiered service is not fair. It’s making their numbers and getting them a big IPO and it is built on the back of my work and that of my peers. That’s how I feel about it. Strongly.
Reznor made the comments in an interview alongside Apple SVP Eddy Cue, VP Robert Kondrk and ‘no official job title’ Jimmy Iovine in which the three discussed the lessons they have learned through launching the streaming music service …
All the excitement for this week’s Apple announcement for the new iPhone SE, 9.7-inch iPad Pro, and refreshed Apple Watch models has got me on the edge of my seat. Not just for the hardware, but also for the potential iTunes software changes that might be coming. Eddy Cue dropped the hint during an interview last month, saying that iTunes would be receiving a refresh this month focusing on music with the new version of Mac OS X. That’s great news, because a refresh is undeniably what iTunes needs right now.
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Complaints that Apple’s App Store algorithms are broken, often returning nonsensical results for highlighted categories like ‘New’ and ‘Hot,’ have finally caught the company’s attention. Phil Schiller yesterday responded to tweeted complaints by Mozilla’s Lisa Brewster and Screenshot++ developer Wesley Dyson.
App Store editors, you had one job https://t.co/uLLOuXTDvb
— Lisa Brewster (@Adora) March 12, 2016
Both drew attention to the fact that highlighted app categories in Canada and other countries (though seemingly not the U.S.) were filled with a whole range of similarly-named apps, and that apps whose names put them at the top of alphanumeric sorting remain in the ‘New’ category forever …
As Apple’s battle with the FBI drags on, the company’s senior vice president of software and services Eddy Cue has sat down with Univision to discuss the case. In the interview, Cue echoes much of what his colleagues have said before regarding the case, including that it should be decided in Congress and several other points.
In his security and privacy post regarding iOS’s current music library, Ben Dodson adds a small addendum explaining that with iOS 9.3 apps can now add music that currently exists in the Apple Music catalog directly to a user’s music library. While a small and under-discussed feature, it opens up further possibilities for many different kinds of apps and application developers.
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John Gruber surprised podcast listeners today by getting Apple’s own Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi on The Talk Show to discuss a variety of topics behind Apple. Since Tim Cook took leadership at Apple, it hasn’t been unheard of for Apple execs to appear on Gruber’s show. The first occurrence was last June when Phil Schiller met John Gruber on stage during WWDC to discuss Apple’s recent announcements and decisions over the past few years. This marks the second time that Federighi has been on the The Talk Show, and Cue’s first.
Apple’s rocky iAd advertising platform is about to see some major changes, says Buzzfeed’s John Paczkowski. According to the report, Apple plans to dismantle its iAd sales team and stop its role as a middleman between publishers and customers:
While iAd itself isn’t going anywhere, Apple’s direct involvement in the selling and creation of iAd units is ending. “It’s just not something we’re good at,” one source told BuzzFeed News. And so Apple is leaving the creation, selling, and management of iAds to the folks who do it best: the publishers.
Apple is phasing out its iAd sales force entirely and updating the iAds platform so that publishers can sell through it directly.
The big news, Buzzfeed notes, is publishers that play ball will take home 100% of the ad revenue generated rather than a 70/30 split with Apple.
It’s been an interesting day for user number stories out of Apple over the weekend. Early Sunday morning it was reported that Apple Music has reached 10 million paying subscribers, or half way to what Spotify currently claims, and a story published late Sunday night includes an interesting confession from Apple’s services guy Eddy Cue. The Apple exec told the WSJ that the company hasn’t been accurately counting the number of users actively using its new Apple News app.
“We’re in the process of fixing that now, but our numbers are lower than reality,” he said. “We don’t know what the right number is,” but he added that it was better to undercount than overcount traffic.
Despite the glitch, Mr. Cue said Apple is pleased with the product so far. He said most feedback from publishers has been positive. Usage has “scaled very fast…but it doesn’t mean we don’t all want more,” he said.
The lower-than-reality numbers have been shared with publishers that use the number to make decisions about using supporting the platform and optionally advertising through it.
As is tradition, Apple is just about the only big consumer tech company not making a public appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. In fact, Apple hasn’t attended CES in any official capacity since John Sculley’s keynote introduction of the Newton in 1992. But Apple exec Eddy Cue, the company’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, is reportedly speaking at a super exclusive, private CES event being held by Rupert Murdoch today in Vegas.
Alongside Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and long list of other tech industry bigwigs, Quartz reports that Cue is scheduled to speak at the event hosted by executive chairman of News Corp. and 21st Century Fox, Rupert Murdoch:
Some of those who work for Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of both News Corp. and 21st Century Fox, also have a special event to attend: A private annual confab in Murdoch’s hotel suite featuring some of the biggest names in business, which started yesterday (Jan. 6) and concludes today… This year’s speakers were scheduled to include Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the founders of news startup TheSkimm, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, venture capitalist/analyst-types Benedict Evans and Mary Meeker, actor and entrepreneur Jessica Alba, and Apple iTunes and cloud services executive Eddy Cue, according to an agenda viewed by Quartz and sources familiar with the event.
The event is usually attended by “an internal audience of Murdoch’s News Corp. and 21st Century Fox lieutenants,” according to Quartz, so it’s possible the content of Cue’s talk will be kept private.
While Apple doesn’t make a public showing at CES these days, it does send some of its people to Vegas each year to check out the competition.
Apple had a small surprise for its retail employees yesterday. After gifting them with urBeats earphones last week, Eddy Cue yesterday sent a video message stating that they would also receive a promo code for a free 9 month Apple Music subscription.
MacRumors reports that the subscription runs for nine months. While nine months rather than a year seems a little odd, it does mean that anyone who has not yet used up their three-month free trial would get a year in total.
With the headphones retailing at $100 (though cheaper on Amazon), and the Apple Music subscription worth $90, it makes the gift significantly more generous than the Incase Staple backpack they got last year.
The urBeats headphones were recently updated to offer a rose gold option.
Yesterday Apple released tvOS 9.1 for the new fourth-gen Apple TV which adds support for the Remote app on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch just like the previous Apple TV model. This makes setup and text input much easier from iPhones and iPads as you can use the software keyboard versus relying on swiping left and right across a keyboard, but many have wondered if Apple would update the Remote app to offer features more like the new Siri Remote for Apple TV. Apple’s Eddy Cue says the answer is definitely, speaking with Buzzfeed, and it’s coming during the first half of next year…
Following his interviews centered around the new Apple TV, Apple’s SVP of software and services Eddy Cue has now sat down with CNN’s Brian Stelter to discuss the News app the company launched alongside iOS 9. In the interview, Cue and Stelter discuss a variety of points surrounding News, including Apple’s main goal with the app, the expansion to additional countries, and revenue sharing.
We first reported and Apple today announced that iPad Pro will go on sale starting Wednesday with a retail launch later this week, and Apple executives are taking the 12.9-inch tablet on a media tour to hype it up. Apple CEO Tim Cook is traveling around London today, visiting Touchpress and chatting with The Independent, while CNN Money has shared its interview with Eddy Cue showing off the massive iPad.
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CNN Money has today shared the second part of its interview with Apple SVP Eddy Cue. In the first part of the interview, shared last week, Cue noted of how the Apple TV has graduated from the “hobby” stage and sold more than 20 million units. While sales of the new fourth-gen box are unclear at this point, Cue did hint at some future features come to the device in part two of the interview, as well as Apple’s ultimate goal with the tvOS platform.
Ahead of the release of the iPad Pro later this month, Apple executives have been taking part in a variety of enterprise-focused interviews, looking to convince the enterprise market of the device’s usefulness. Today, Apple’s SVP Eddy Cue sat down for a fireside chat with Dropbox CEO Drew Houston at the cloud storage company’s Open conference.
With the new Apple TV shipping to customers and expected to hit stores tomorrow, Eddy Cue, the head of Apple’s Internet services, is talking up the latest set-top box in a new interview with CNN Money.
In the demo, Cue relates the new Siri Remote’s touchpad to using multitouch on iPhones and iPads. This allows tvOS, the software running on the new Apple TV, to become a platform for what Cue calls an “app ecosystem” as we’ve seen explode on iOS. Cue says Apple believes the same explosion will take place on television next.
Asked about Steve Jobs’ description of Apple TV as a hobby years ago, Cue said the product category has “absolutely” graduated past that label with over 20 million prior-generations boxes sold even before the new model hits stores. Tim Cook offered a slightly higher number in January — over 25 million sold — so Cue is likely ballparking it but setting the stage for 4th-gen Apple TV sales.
In an interview with London’s Evening Standard, Apple SVP Eddy Cue said that Apple is relaxed about how many Apple Music subscribers are immediately willing to pay for the service once their free trial ends.
Ultimately, you never know until it happens. But we’re pleased with the number of people who have tried. Everybody gets fixated on the short term but we’re in this for the long haul.
Though published today, the interview took place before the trial ended for early adopters, so doesn’t give any hint as to conversion rates …
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In addition to a failed attempt to hire the stars of the BBC series Top Gear for its reported plans to develop in-house content, Re/code reports that media head Eddy Cue also approached sports commentator Bill Simmons.
Apple showed interest in signing up former ESPN star Bill Simmons to an exclusive audio podcast deal. Apple media boss Eddy Cue discussed the idea a couple of times with Simmons this summer, say people familiar with the talks, who say that they were preliminary at best.
Simmons ended up signing with HBO, the deal including a new podcast from October – which is likely to be available on iTunes.
Variety had earlier reported that Apple is looking to create a Netflix competitor, focusing on original programming – likely to form part of its planned web TV service designed to go head-to-head with traditional cable TV packages.
Photo: Digital Trends
In a statement to USA Today, Apple has officially announced it has signed up 11 million members to Apple Music since launch. Eddy Cue says he is “thrilled with the numbers so far”, noting that about 2 million of that number have signed up for a family plan, which costs $14.99 for up to six people. The real success of Apple Music won’t be known until the 3 month trial ends and the 11 million have to make the choice to start paying for the monthly subscription.
The controversy surrounding Apple Music’s launch thanks to Taylor Swift made for an excellent way to drum up some extra attention for the service’s debut late last month. First, Swift, who was already vocal in the past regarding streaming services, penned a blog post knocking down Apple’s decision to offer a free, three-month trial without paying artists for streams during that period. Apple responded to Taylor’s decision to hold back her music from the service and it was thought the blog post eventually inspired Apple to reverse its decision. Swift responded to Apple’s decision positively and announced her latest record would be available on the service, all in the days leading up to the Apple Music launch on June 30.
Today we get a bit of insight into what was going on behind the scenes via a Fortune interview with CEO of Taylor’s label, Big Machine Label Group, Scott Borchetta. The record exec notes that he was already in the middle of negotiations with Apple regarding the terms of the three-month trial when Swift published her blog post without letting her label know beforehand. In the end, Apple was able to gain added attention over its music service launch with Swift’s album featured on day one.
