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By John Glenday, Reporter

February 16, 2016 | 2 min read

Apple’s first venture into the realm of original content has been revealed to be Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling’ music video following reports that the Cuppertino juggernaut had paid not only to release the viral video through its streaming service but also to produce the accompanying video.

Released as an exclusive on Apple Music last October before being shared on other platforms such as YouTube the following week, the viral hit has become a meme in its own right picking up on the novel dance moves it displayed.

This success, alongside that of the more recent release of Taylor Swift’s 1989 World Tour Live, has evidently spurred Apple into funding more original content with reports that it is producing six half-hour episodes of Vital Signs, a biographical TV show following Beats co-founder and Apple employee Dr. Dre.

Apple has been employing paid-for exclusives as a means of drawing subscribers to its Apple Music service and has had quite a bit of success in doing so having racked up 11m of them, a significant body of users considering there is no option to stream content for free like at Spotify – which has 20m paid subscribers and 55m free users.

Apple still has a fight on its hands to procure the best content however with Kanye West recently declaring that his new album, The Life of Pablo, would ‘never, never, never be on Apple,’ releasing it on Jay-Z owned streaming service Tidal instead.

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