Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music, is a music lover. For a little over 15 years, he has distilled his technical and technological know-how in Cupertino International: first to content and then in Apple Music which he took the presidency in 2018. He has also been since 2020, CEO De Beats, bought by Apple in 2014. Before that, this 50 -year -old German began his career at Universal Television in Germany before taking the direction of San Francisco to take charge of Napster’s marketing. After a return to Germany to Vodafone, Oliver Schusser was recruited in 2004 by Eddy Cue, Senior Vice President of Services at Apple, to exercise his talents in the Apple Music branch. Since 2018, he has been at the head of this streaming service which can boast of counting more than 100 million songs available to subscribers. Faced with Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, YouTube Music, Amazon Music or Qobuz, Apple Music play the sound quality card to stand out and attract customers. AirPods, listen to the best -selling worldwide and real fashion accessories, allow the Cupertino firm to garner new customers every day. Who discovered in 2021 the audio space, a technology offering a total immersion sound and offering sounds in Dolby Atmos. This Spatial Audio, available on the new AirPods Pro, is now integrated into Mercedes-Benz vehicles. The beginning of a new era in music and sound for Apple that Oliver Schusser took the time to tell us in Paris during an interview in an Apple studio with, between two questions, a life -size test of the famous Spatial Audio on some pretty music notes: Marvin Gaye, Lomepal, Elton John and a little classical music.
Are you waiting for us to explain what music represents in a box like Apple?
Music is part of Apple’s DNA. When Steve Jobs founded the company, he had artists in mind, the majority of them use our products, hardware or software, to make their music today. So we have a deep relationship with the creatives. On an Apple Music, Shazam, always with the objective of delivering a premium experience in terms of quality. And that worried us: on streaming, we have more than 100 million songs today, people can listen to it on many devices (smartphones, tablets, xbox playful game consoles, TV …) but nobody really speaks of the son, of his quality. If you ask your children, young people, they don’t care. Suddenly, no one cared about it and we were content with stereo. So we decided to do something: innovate. We had already worked with Dolby on films, and everyone knows Dolby Atmos. We also worked with Universal Music, to bring a new sound. All of this was integrated into the audio space. We wanted to do it in the simplest way for customers, without giving them too many choices: all Apple Music subscribers have space audio with Dolby Atmos, at the same price.
Spatial Audio works on all devices: Airpods, Airpods Max, Beats helmet… and we immediately see the difference. It’s a noticeable change because the sound comes from everywhere and no longer just from one or two places. Artists love it because they are now a new canvas to make their music. They can say “I want the sounds of the drums to come from there and from there, the guitar here, the vocals there …”. They have great creative freedom.
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