Dance brand Ministry of Sound is up to something with Apple Music, as revealed by a TV ad (as well as an Apple Connect post) with a prominent date: 04.10.18. MBW reports that “Apple Music is going to officially begin hosting Ministry Of Sound-branded playlists from this Thursday” and suggests that “the only place the public will be able to find these brands, in the streaming space at least, will be on Apple Music”.
We have a few questions. First: Ministry of Sound already has 14 playlists available on Apple Music, including Dance Nation, Ibiza Anthems, Weekend Warmup, Sunday Chill, R&B Mixtape and Rave Nation. All of which appear to have been updated last Friday. So they’re already available – although Thursday’s launch may be focusing on how they’re promoted. Second: many of these playlists are also available on Spotify: Dance Nation has more than 273,000 followers there, for example, while R&B Mixtape has more than 154,000. If there’s some kind of exclusivity for Apple Music, will these playlists be removed from Spotify?
In any case, it’s a step on for Ministry and Apple’s relationship: back in 2015, its then-CEO Lohan Presencer talked publicly about its decision to withhold its catalogue from Apple Music partly because of its lack of support for curators. “Music services who espouse the value of curation, and their support of independent labels, need to put their money where their mouth is,” he said at the time.
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