Just over a week ago, Apple Inc’s co-founder, Chairman, CEO and innovator-in-chief Steve Jobs passed away following a long fight with pancreatic cancer. Jobs announced he was suffering from cancer in 2004, and several periods of extended sickness leave followed. He underwent a liver transplant in 2009 but in January this year requested a further passage of medical leave before finally resigning as CEO in August and handing over to Tim Cook. His untimely death was just weeks away.
And yet during his difficult, protracted illness, Apple’s profile continued to grow – its revenues, its innovations, its influence on the way we lead our lives. It’s a reality more than borne out by the wave of tributes to Jobs made in the past few days; people from all sorts of nationalities and backgrounds with something important to say about Jobs and the way he has developed Apple.
The global music community, rightly, has one of the loudest voices. To many minds, Apple means the iPod which ever since its introduction in November 2001 has revolutionized the way people consume music. That original, relatively bulky iPod ‘Classic’, has subsequently spawned Shuffles, Touches and Nanos (all of which have experienced multiple re-designs) to appeal to every type of listener.
Universal UK chairman and CEO David Joseph comments: “What he did for digital music and encouraging people to pay for digital music was pioneering. He totally changed the landscape for us, and for our future,” whilst Columbia Records MD Mike Smith talks about Jobs “breaking down the power of the album” by allowing music fans to purchase individual tracks. “He’s definitely moved music away from the album format and enabled us all to increase our music consumption,” he adds.
Apple’s sizeable hand in deconstructing ‘the album’ is something that, within clubland, Israeli techno star Guy Gerber still has reservations about. “Jobs has changed music consumption for ever and not necessarily for the best” he opens. “He was rushing the death of the album because iTunes was offering people the chance to buy only the song that that they’d heard and liked, rather than listening to the whole composition. When everybody is buying MP3s, the covers, and experiences of albums become less and less significant.”
It’s a point that DJHistory.com’s Bill Brewster supports: “Musically, I don’t think he’s been a good influence at all, although I’m sure the major labels wouldn’t agree, given the fact iTunes gave them a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card.
“iTunes has killed the album, so now consumers buy tracks rather than singles and albums and I think that's a great loss because it further feeds into the quick-fix culture we now live in and does not allow slow-burning songs to penetrate into the culture. Jobs has also created a generation for whom low resolution bit-rate music is the norm, so now no-one cares about the appalling presentation of music and how bad it sounds on most music systems, either domestic or out in bars.”
Deep electronic DJ and producer Ewan Pearson disagrees that downloads are all bad: “Jobs created a paid solution to digital music when record companies didn't know what to do and piracy was rampant - he insisted that buying music and paying creators was still important. We can argue about onerous iTunes store terms or reduced digital royalties or whatever but the bottom line is a computer company put in place a simple, elegant means for ordinary people to buy music digitally and thus keep supporting the industry somehow. I think the likes of Spotify and Facebook see us as a pure commodity to be mined and, quite frankly, don't give a rat's arse.”
Gerber also takes significant positives from Jobs’ reign. “iTunes did, undeniably, make music more accessible and easy to get. And Jobs supported the development of the garage band and bedroom producer; he brought the possibility of creating music to anyone who had a Mac and made it very easy to learn. His technology and products encouraged a lot of people to try and get involved in music production, which has benefitted many of our scenes.”
And even Brewster concedes Apple’s role in making technology more digestible for the mass market. Such accessibility has, at least on a very general level, encouraged talented wannabes to experiment with music and tech, and progress to pivotal performances and productions as credible artists.
“I do feel conflicted about Steve Jobs” he says. “There’s no denying he’s had an enormous influence on the design and usability of modern technology. I’ve been a Mac user since 1988.”
Jobs founded Apple alongside Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976, quarter of a century before the arrival of iPod and iTunes. Together they designed, developed, and marketed Apple II, one of the world’s first commercially successful lines of personal computers. The ‘Macintosh’ followed in the Eighties, and in the late Nineties – after Jobs’ had resigned from Apple, set up NeXT Computer, and then returned as part of Apple’s 1996 buyout of the company – Apple’s powerful Mac OS X operating system; a hugely advanced, but stylish, crystal clear system that would, in the coming years, drive a range of desktop and laptop products (everything from the all-in-one iMac desktop computer to the sleek, brushed metal Macbook) united by appealing design, desirable branding and ease of use.
“I’ve used Apple stuff since I was a student. Even back then the difference in enjoyment in terms of using the Mac as a computer was so great” Pearson explains. “It felt like a computer that was designed for people to use rather than feeling like something that was specifically designed to exclude or frustrate anyone who wasn't one of the chosen few.
“I wrote all my college stuff on it, later a book, and then upgraded to a machine that would run Logic - this was when you first were able to manipulate audio and midi sequences on the same page - another thing we all take for granted now - but it blew my mind and massively increased the options of what you were able to do. I can't really imagine not using a Mac to make music with at this point.”
The fact, then, that a game-changer like Jobs is now gone presents Pearson with genuine artistic concerns: “Jobs’ company has made many things that have given me a lot of pleasure and been an integral part of my working life and I worry that without him that will falter. It’s sad that he’s passed; that obsessive compulsion to make things as great as possible - that sheer enthusiasm and mania about the tiniest detail - is laudable.”
Scott Snibbe, the acclaimed interactive media artist behind Bjork’s seismic new ‘app album’ Biophilia, is also keen to bestow praise. For him, Apple’s music revolution firmly pre-dates the iPod. “I remember the magic of using Electronic Arts' Music Construction Set on my Apple II, entering sheet music too difficult for me to play, and learning my favourite New Order songs note-by-note” he remarks. “Apple was first to the MIDI adapter, and has long remained a dominant platform for electronic music creation thanks to people like David Zicarelli [influential US software developer] who ran with the Mac as an audio creation platform. Note the date of release of his founding of Cycling ‘74 [San Francisco-based software and music label] in 1997.”
Snibbe talks on about the advents of iPhone and iPad and all of the clever audio-visual shenanigans associated with those ubiquitous platforms – there’s countless music apps, Bjork, of course, and even a superstar iPad DJ these days, Rana Sobhany – but that’s probably the basis of another conversation. Jobs’ CV is a long one, after all, offering countless talking points.
It is British Phonographic Industry [BPI] Chairman Tony Wadsworth who aims for the final word: “Through design and innovation Steve Jobs turned a technology company into a creative industry. He was inspirational and his legacy is immeasurable.”
Steve Jobs has changed the musical world in which we live - fact. And he has inspired a new generation of music makers and lovers - fact. There remains lively debate around the download phenomenon his company has helped institutionalize (fact…) but the format continues to grow rapidly which paints its own striking picture. When all is said and done, no one can really dispute Jobs’ extraordinary creative, cultural and business acumen. Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see if Apple can sustain those ‘core’ talents without him.
Words: Ben Lovett
