Apple Music Today is Apple’s new music series, an audio documentary of sorts that highlights one popular song every day and reveals the story behind it.
- What is happening? In honor of 100 million songs, Apple launched a new Apple Music Today series that explores the history of popular songs. Every day a new song is presented.
- Why care? Apple Music has the most extensive catalog of all music streaming services. Apple has released several music documentaries in the past, and if you enjoyed them, you’ll love the new Apple Music Today series.
- What to do? Browse Apple Music and visit the new Apple Music Today section for the first entry in the Sinead O’Connor series.
Apple Music Today: How Popular Songs Came to Be
Here is a description of the show from Apple:
Apple Music Today is our new daily series that explores one song from our catalog of over 100 million and tells the story behind it. From mainstream hits to short cuts and surprise news, our Apple Music hosts dive across genres and decades, revealing untold stories 365 days later about what is the soundtrack to our lives.
Visit the new section of Apple Music Today today at this link.
100 million songs on Apple Music
There are 100 million songs on Apple Music today.
Twenty-one years after the invention of iTunes and the debut of the original iPod, we’ve gone from having 1,000 songs in your pocket to 100,000 times the number of songs in Apple Music. This is phenomenal growth by any measure. The entire history, present and future of music is at your fingertips or with a voice command.
There is more music than you can listen to in a lifetime or several lifetimes. More music than any other platform. Simply the largest collection of music in any format.
One hundred million songs is a number that will grow and increase exponentially. But it’s more than just a number, representing something much more important – a tectonic shift in the business of making and distributing music over the past two decades.
To celebrate the occasion, Apple has published a press release in the Apple Newsroom that provides some interesting statistics about music in general.
For example, did you know that only 5,000 new albums were released each year in the 1960s? But fast forward to 2022 and you’ll be surprised to know that 20,000 singers and songwriters upload new songs to Apple Music every day. Read: How to Transfer Favorite Songs and Playlists from Spotify to Apple Music
Nothing compares to 2 Sinead O’Connor
The first entry in the Apple Music Today series is dedicated to 55-year-old Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor, whose first two albums, released in the 1980s, charted internationally to rave reviews. An episode about the “rise, fall and rise again of a ’90s pop superstar”, as described.
In 2017, the singer changed her name to Magda Dawitt. A year later, she changed it again to Shuhada Sadaqat after converting to Islam.
This episode also chronicles O’Connor’s Saturday Night Live performance in 1992 when she tore apart a photograph of Pope John Paul II and scattered the pieces to protest child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The episode is aptly titled “Nothing Compares to Sinead O’Connor Going Against SNL”.