Apple Music ‘Special Event’ announced
- Apple has announced a ‘Special Event’ scheduled for June 7th at 12 PM, two hours after the start of the WWDC21 keynote.
- The tagline for the Music event is “Introducing Spatial Audio”, indicating that this event will feature Apple Music’s new Dolby Atmos support.
- The Apple Music Radio video announcing the event has since been taken down, implicative of an accidental release on Apple’s part.
It’s official; WWDC21 is less than 24 hours away, and I couldn’t be more ecstatic. From new MacBooks to all the software goodness we can expect from Apple, it’s sure to be a jam packed day. However, there’s one new unexpected event on the schedule amongst the annual announcements: an Apple Music “Special Event” revealed today.
Yes, you read that right; an event unannounced all the way up to now (less than a day from the main event). This is highly unusual for Apple, considering the full schedule for the developer conference is usually known in advance, with the annual software updates to each platform and occasional new hardware announcements. The consistency of WWDC over the past years (especially when compared to other Apple Events) has made every unexpected announcement far more exciting, especially when it comes to Apple’s services such as Music and Arcade. Interestingly, the last time an Apple software service was announced at WWDC was all the way back at WWDC 15, when Apple Music was first revealed. Perhaps Apple has chosen to release the new Music features at dub-dub as a throwback to the original Apple Music at WWDC 15, as an indication of how big of a change to Music it is, comparable to the first Music announcement in its importance.
That would explain the choice of WWDC21 for the announcement, and June 7th for the date, right after the biggest Apple software event of the year; the WWDC Keynote. As for the content of the event, the title says it all; Spatial Audio. Last month, Apple announced that Music will include support for Dolby Atmos and Lossless audio for no additional cost on top of an Apple Music subscription. According to that initial announcement, the feature would ship in June (causing some to ponder the proposition of a release at WWDC21). Now, we finally have an official - albeit removed - announcement of the new Music features-only event.
Dolby Atmos, Lossless, and Hi-Res Lossless audio coming to Apple Music in Junehttps://t.co/xf47vZJZT2
— Apple Scoop (@AppleScoop) May 17, 2021
The only unexplained aspect of the announcement is one not usually expected from Apple; the release and subsequent removal of the announcement from Apple Music, where it was hosted for an unknown length of time before being spotted and taken down. Now, if you click on a link to the announcement on Apple Music Radio, an "Item no available" prompt appears. From a company known for its highly anticipated perfectly planned events, this accidental reveal is quite unexpected, and leaves me wondering why it was removed in the first place, considering the event is less than a day away. Regardless of the situation surrounding the surreptitious slip up, no correction or clarification has been provided by Apple, leaving me to believe that the ‘Special Event’ is still on schedule for tomorrow along with the WWDC21 Keynote.
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