Written by Tim Ingham — Do women find it particularly difficult to discover music?
It’s a new one on us, but that’s what Jimmy Iovine claimed today (November 19) on a live interview with CBS in America.
As you can watch in the video, CBS This Morning host Gayle King welcomed Apple Music kingpin Iovine to the studio alongside “queen of hip-hop soul” and Apple Music endorser Mary J Blige.
King introduced the show with a new Apple Music TV ad featuring Blige alongside Kerry Washington and Taraji P. Henson – the second in a marketing series featuring the trio.
There is dancing in the kitchen, and a touch of salsa.
King then asks Iovine: “What was your thinking?”
The exec replies: “Streaming’s a technology… what this is is a music streaming service.
“What is does is… sort of gives you 30 million songs, and it serves them up to you and makes it easy to find music.
“SO I ALWAYS KNEW THAT WOMEN FIND IT VERY DIFFICULT AT TIMES – SOME WOMEN – TO FIND MUSIC.”“So I always knew that women find it very difficult at times – some women – to find music. And this helps makes it easier with playlists, curated by real people. They’re not made by algorithms alone – they’re made by algorithms but with a human touch.”
JIMMY IOVINE, APPLE
As for the trio in the ad, Mary J Blige says it was a “genius idea” by Apple to bring them together.
“It was just beautiful to have Jimmy choose me to be a part of [her co-stars’] world and them be a part of mine.”
Iovine is asked about his “creative concept” for the new ad.
He says: “I just thought of a problem: girls are sitting around talking about boys, right? Or complaining about boys! When they’re heartbroken or whatever…
“They need music for that, right? It’s hard to find the right music. Not everyone has, you know, the right list… or knows a DJ.”
[UPDATE: Iovine has apologised for his comments. In a statement, he said: “We created Apple Music to make finding the right music easier for everyone — men and women, young and old. Our new ad focuses on women, which is why I answered the way I did, but of course the same applies equally for men. I could have chosen my words better, and I apologise.”]
Iovine’s contestable comments come a month after his public attack on Spotify and the ‘freemium’ model at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco.
