Apple finally announced its streaming service, with a little help from Drake (pictured); the 21st annual Los Angeles Film Festival will once include a showcase called LA Muse; the Tony Awards made some Broadway history with a first-time win for women composers.
WWDC 2015: Apple Music streaming service announced
Apple announced their new Apple Music service — a successor to Dr. Dre's Beats service, which the company previously purchased — during the annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote Monday morning. Apple's Tim Cook promised that it would change the way people experience music forever.
The Apple Music service will be available starting June 30, offering three months for free followed by moving up to $9.99/month. They're offering a family plan for $14.99/month, and allowing non-members to listen to their Beats1 radio service and use their artist Connect feature.
Music superstar Drake promoted the Apple Music Connect feature, connecting fans and artists. The Weeknd also debuted a new song in a performance to close the keynote.
Apple Music also isn't limited to Apple devices — it's also going to be available for Android, as they try to compete against streaming music industry leader Spotify. It also includes music videos, not just music.
The service's highlights, according to music executive Jimmy Iovine:
- A promise of providing the right playlist for the right moment
- An expanded radio service
- A portion targeted at artists, enabling them to more easily connect with fans
Dawn Chmielewski is the Senior Editor at Re/Code, and she joined us from San Francisco to weigh in on the Apple Music Announcement.
Interview Highlights:
On whether or not Apple Music will change the way we listen to music, like Tim Cook claimed:
[laughs] Tim has a gift for understatement, as you can tell. It's clear that Apple needs to do something, at least for its own benefit. Right now, Apple really dominates the music download business: it has a 70% share of the music that consumers purchase via digital download.
But he's right in one respect: the world is changing, people are listening to music in a different way, and that's by music streams which are akin to radio. Apple's download business, the iTunes Store, is really losing its pull with consumers, or at least younger consumers who perhaps represent the future for the music business. So Apple needed to change and offer a music service that was more attuned to the way consumers are listening to music now.
On Apple's attempt to wade in to every market for music listening:
Apple attempted to create radio algorithmically, so they created a bloodless bunch of playlists that listeners could hear on their iPhones as they went running or went about their day, but it was an experience that truly was anemic and didn't appeal to consumers. It missed the personality of a radio station or the sophisticated curation that people who know music can really bring to playlists.
So that's what Apple's attempting to do with this version of their music service -- they're creating a programmed radio offering, hiring one of the BBC's top DJs to program a 24-hour radio station which sounds just like the radio we're familiar with, and they're also learning from the Beats Music service, which they acquired last year.
On giving Apple Music a try when it's released:
I'll give it a listen, but it has a lot of competition in the market. It has competition not only from the radio in our cars, but also satellite radio has millions of subscribers. Meanwhile, they're entering the digital side against Spotify, which has an 80% share of the music that is streamed via the internet to some device. Most of Spotify's listeners listen free, so Apple's going to have to find a way to create a compelling offering that is not free.
The music service was announced by Iovine (whom you might know from working with huge artists, as well as being a regular on several seasons of "American Idol"). Iovine talked about a variety of challenges the music industry had faced with technology, from Napster to Limewire. They also cited involvement in developing the service from Dr. Dre and Trent Reznor.
Apple introduced their music service with an artsy video going through the history of music. The music announcement was saved for the end of the keynote, serving as Apple's famous "one more thing" that they always save for the end of their big events.
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the One More Thing is always music. it's Apple's Favorite Afterthought
— FacePaulm Revere (@facepaulmrevere)
The event opened up with a video of actor/comedian Bill Hader playing the event's director. It also included other funny people, like Charlyne Yi, Danny Pudi and Matt Walsh, as well as nods to Angry Birds, Tinder, Goat Simulator and more iconic apps.
Here's the #WWCD15 intro starring Bill Hader!
Here's the opening video to Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference! #wwdc15
Posted by BuzzFeed Tech on Monday, June 8, 2015
Other highlights included a News app, a Transit app and updates to many existing apps, including Health and Apple Pay. Apple also announced updates to their three operating systems — OS X, iOS and watchOS. Apple also took shots at Windows and Android for having significantly lower adoption rates than Apple when it comes to having the most recent OSes.
This year's WWDC in San Francisco runs through Friday.
This story has been updated.
Tony Awards 2015: 'Fun Home' scores landmark win with all-female composing team
Broadway history was made Sunday night when Tony Award voters gave the best new musical accolade to "Fun Home," making it the first time an all-female composing team has been awarded.
"It absolutely was a landmark event," says Jesse Green, theater critic for New York Magazine.
The musical, adapted from Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, is about a young female cartoonist coming to understand her own sexuality as a lesbian in college — while her father comes out as a gay man. Some considered it a surprise win.
"The content is so unusual for Broadway, and not only the content but the style," Green says. "It's really dark — of course it's also very funny — and it's very musical, but not the kind of razzmatazz you normally expect a Tony Award to go to."
Another interesting grab was Alex Sharp for best actor in a leading role in "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," a year after he graduated from Juilliard. But the 25-year-old's win isn't a big surprise.
"He gave a really nuanced and athletic performance in the show where the main character whom he played isn't necessarily so verbally expressive, so a lot comes down to the body and the movements, which were staged by the director and choreographer almost as if it were a musical," Green says.
Other than Helen Mirren, actors who had a foot in Hollywood didn't win any races. Big names like Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan were nominated but didn't come out as champs.
"It wasn't a great night for them, but not because there's a prejudice against Hollywood actors who do a good job — that they didn't win is just a circumstance of the year. There were a lot of really good performances and when it comes to that, sometimes voters will choose, just on the basis of their hearts — not the basis of being bedazzled."
The best acceptance speech?
"It was Lisa Kron's speech for winning book of a musical for 'Fun Home,' and ironically was a prayer, almost, that we come to see that Broadway is like a house that has many more rooms in it than we thought it did and not ignore those rooms. Ironically, that speech was left in some room that wasn't visited by the American audience last night."
It didn't air on the television broadcast, but you can watch it here.
Here's the full list of award winners:
Tony Awards 2015: Winners List
- Best Play: "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"
- Best Musical: "Fun Home"
- Best Revival of a Play: "Skylight"
- Best Revival of a Muscial: "The King and I"
- Best Book of a Musical: Lisa Kron, "Fun Home"
- Best Original Score (music and/or lyrics) Written for the Theater: Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron, "Fun Home"
- Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play: Alex Sharp,"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"
- Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play: Helen Mirren, "The Audience"
- Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical: Michael Cerveris, "Fun Home"
- Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical: Kelli O'Hara, "The King and I"
- Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play: Richard McCabe, "The Audience"
- Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play: Annaleigh Ashford, "You Can't Take It with You"
- Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical: Christian Borle, "Something Rotten!"
- Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play: Ruthie Ann Miles, "The King and I"
- Best Scenic Design of a Play: Bunny Christie and Finn Ross, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"
- Best Scenic Design of a Musical: Bob Crowley and 59 Productions, "An American in Paris"
- Best Costume Design of a Play: Christopher Oram, "Wolf Hall Parts One & Two"
- Best Costume Design of a Musical: Catherine Zuber, "The King and I"
- Best Lighting Design of a Play: Paule Constable, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"
- Best Lighting Design of a Musical: Natasha Katz, "An American in Paris"
- Best Direction of a Play: Marianne Elliott, "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"
- Best Direction of a Musical: Sam Gold, "Fun Home"
- Best Choreography: Christopher Wheeldon, "An American in Paris"
- Best Orchestrations: Christopher Austin, Don Sebesky, Bill Elliott, "An American in Paris"
- Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theater: Tommy Tune
- Special Tony Award: John Cameron Mitchell
- Regional Theater Tony Award: Cleveland Play House, Cleveland, Ohio
- Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award: Stephen Schwartz
- Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theater: Arnold Abramson, Adrian Bryan-Brown, Gene O'Donovan
LA Film Festival 2015: Finding its voice by focusing on women, people of color and Los Angeles
The Los Angeles Film Festival, which kicks off Wednesday, runs through June 18 in downtown L.A. It's a film festival that has yet to fully define its own distinct identity.
If you want to see the latest movies made outside the studio system, you head to Sundance. Fans of the best work in international cinema might visit the Cannes Film Festival. And the Telluride Film Festival lineup will be well-curated and probably have a couple of future Oscar winners.
We met with Stephanie Allain, the festival’s director, and Roya Rastegar, the festival’s associate director of film programming, to find out what the L.A. Film Festival is all about.
Finding the festival's voice
Roya - programmer at Sundance, Tribeca. LA Film Festival. Movies tend to favor, movies tend to avoid?
"One of the things that we were really focusing on this year is to find talent. Because the city of L.A. is full of new talent that is waiting to break out, and it's full of industry professionals that are looking for new talent," Rastegar says.
Of the festival's films, 80 percent are directed by first- or second-time directors, Rastegar says. They also have 45 world premieres, which Rastegar says is a lot for the festival.
"The way that we really found those films was by digging deep into the films that are being submitted. I think often there is the sense that there are only really a few good films made every year, or that maybe women aren't making films, or that people of color aren't making films, but actually, they are making films. Curators just need to be able to make space for them," Rastegar says.
Giving a voice to women, people of color
That search for new talent was at the front of the staff's mind, Rastegar says. Half of the festival's shorts were directed by women. People of color also directed half of the films.
A recent study by USC, co-commissioned by the Sundance Institute and Women In Film, showed that half of film school students are women, but that the number of women in festivals goes down by half. Then, when it comes to big studio films, that number drops again to just 3 or 4 percent.
The L.A. Film Festival is trying to change that, but Allain says they aren't putting their hand on the scale to tip things in favor of women.
"I don't have to put my hand on the scale, because those women directors are out there, they're making these movies, and our job was just to find them," Allain says.
She says they're bringing those movies to audiences through the festival. Of the movies in competition, 40 percent were directed by women.
"That is a beautiful, beautiful number. It's not even the perfect number, which would be 50 — 51, actually, 51 percent. But either way, it's a big step forward," Allain says.
There are significant barriers to entry in Hollywood. To get hired to make a feature film, you have to have already made a feature film before. Bringing these women directors to a larger audience could help people in the audience be more inclined to hire them in the future.
"This year we opened an industry office with the sole desire to connect these first- and second-time filmmakers with new jobs, with people who can see their films, who can offer them gigs, who can pay them to write, pay them to direct," Allain says. "Hollywood is here, the industry is here. It is a great opportunity to make that connection."
Featuring movies that embody Los Angeles
The festival also has a subset of films called L.A. Muse, focused on films specific to the city.
"L.A. Muse is really looking at how the city of Los Angeles has been a muse to filmmakers and artists around the world. It's also about how artists and filmmakers in L.A. are continually inspired by the city," Rastegar says.
Allain says that she began to conceive of the idea due to how many of the films submitted to the festival are set in L.A. and made my local filmmakers.
"I think six out of eight of the fiction films in that section sold. I think the most high-profile was David Oyelowo's 'Nightingale,'" Allain says.
"Nightingale," directed by Elliott Lester, had its world premiere at last year's L.A. Muse before making a big splash on HBO, Allain says.
"This is a film that had been submitted to every single festival, and so the idea that L.A. Muse can be a beacon for L.A. films is really exciting," Allain says. "This year, we got it right even more, because I think last year we were just sort of figuring out how these films fit in, but this year I think every single film in this section is emblematic of that inspirational Los Angeles vibe."
Allain says L.A. Muse is set to be a staple of the festival.
"There's a lot of films that are about creative practice," Rastegar says.
L.A. Muse highlights
She highlighted some of the films featured in L.A. Muse this year:
- "Flock of Dudes": The movie features a lot of members of L.A.'s improv comedy scene
- "A Beautiful Now": The story of a ballet dancer in L.A. trying to reckon with getting older
- Zoe Cassavetes's “Day Out of Days": A new drama about an actress who’s about to hit that advanced age when you’re considered too old to matter in Hollywood. And that age... would be 40
- "Weepah Way For Now": A movie set in Laurel Canyon starring the Michalka sisters, who you might know as Disney Channel musicians
"[The Michalka sisters] also financed and produced the film, and it's really about women and the kind of voice that young women in the city now are having," Rastegar says.
She also highlighted two documentaries:
- "Can You Dig This": A doc about the gangster gardner in Compton
- "No Más Bebés": A documentary about the landmark case involving the sterilization of Mexican-American women by L.A. County and the USC Medical Center, as well as the Chicana lawyer and Chicana women who fought against it, Rastegar says
"You have this incredibly diverse city, not only in terms of ethnically, and racially, and across nationalities, but you also have a city in which creative practice is something that people have been constantly thinking about, around how do we tell stories, and how do we create things that are beautiful? And also, how do we create movements — revolutionary movements?"
Rastegar says those ideas are reflected throughout the L.A. Muse films.
Why the L.A. Film Festival matters
When it comes to how the L.A. Film Festival is going to earn its place among the high-profile festivals, Allain joked that the Frame was already mentioning them in the same company.
"Listen. Los Angeles is the most creative city in the world. It has the most creative jobs in the world. And we've been here for a while, we're going to stay here. Right now we're stationed downtown, which is the renaissance of the city for the last 20 years. We've been part of that renaissance, if you haven't been there for the last six years. And seeing downtown spring up around us has just been, with all kinds of artists — it's film, it's theater, it's visual art. The restaurants, the museums. I mean, L.A. is a major player, and the Los Angeles Film Festival is a part of that scene."
Whether it can be a part of the larger worldwide festival scene remains to be seen, but you can check out the festival to see yourself starting this Wednesday, June 10, running through Thursday, June 18.
More films from the L.A. Film Festival:
- My Love, Don't Cross That RIver: Kang Kye-Yeol and Cho Byeong-Man share the last moments of their 76-year-long marriage in rural Korea:
- Three women put their health at risk to carry on with everyday life in their ancestral homeland in Holly Morris and Anne Bogart's "The Babushkas of Chernobyl":
- Two half brothers are reunited after their father's death as they embark on a trip to Colombia to discover each other and their heritage in A.D. Freese's "Bastards y Diablos":