Tech

Apple launches streaming service by showcasing a fake indie artist

by Jeremy Mersereau

At the 2015 Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, Apple had nothing but groundbreaking announcements.

Their next OS X will be called “El Capitan”! The Apple Watch will be getting an update, with the option to add new watch faces! Exciting stuff, particularly if you get jazzed about watch faces. “I liked this watch face before it was cool” – all those watch hipsters.

But what about the music? Apple trotted out none other than the mogul’s mogul, Interscope Records and Beats By Dre co-founder Jimmy Iovine to announce Apple Music, the brand’s own proprietary music streaming service. At last, an online music streaming service!

Apple Music will launch June 30 on iOS, OS X, and Windows, and weighs at a price point of $9.99 a month, with the first three months free. But how can a new streaming service not be a Slacker, and stand out in the Tidal sea of competition, without opening a Pandora’s box of feature bloat? One way would be to offer increased support and options for unsigned artists and small independent labels, and that’s just what Apple hit on in their presentation. VP of Intel Software and Services Eddy Cue made sure to note that unsigned artists would be able to upload their songs to Apple Music. Cue then deigned to highlight a hip, new unsigned artist named Loren Kramar, and even played a snippet of one of his songs! *Kramar bursts in the door to his friend’s apartment*

For an aspiring musician, this is huge. Promo time in front of millions of Apple fans, probably the most conspicuous consumers on the planet after Kanye West, could be the ticket to the big time. So who is Loren Kramar? For a hungry, unsigned artist, there’s surprisingly little information about the musician online. Kramar, you messed up! Any independent artist worth their instant ramen knows you got to be on your grind 24/7, and Internet promotion is crucial! Kramar’s Twitter account only went live a few seconds after being mentioned on the Apple stage, which in itself is a dead giveaway that this isn’t someone struggling to make it in the music world.

Turns out Kramar is a hyper-connected 26-year-old magazine editor and visual artist who once crafted a set of silver spoons for a show, which is hilarious since he’s also the son of a wealthy scrap metal magnate. Kramar is almost certainly already “signed” to Interscope, as one of the only Tweets promoting Kramar is Joe “3H” Weinberger, a former A&R man at the label:

Sure, Kramar could be deserving of a spotlight for his music, and he’s definitely technically “unsigned” — in the nebulous post-2005 sense of the term meaning nobody knows his name yet — but he’s pretty clearly already spoken for. In choosing to highlight an “unsigned-but-not-really” artist like Kramar, Apple’s missed a big opportunity to, y’know, actually show a real commitment to independent artists. Instead, they’ve chosen the Tidal path of kowtowing to elites/The Illuminati.