We convened a panel of passionate experts to get to the bottom of this one mystery.
A major new music product from Apple raises all kind of big questions, many of which our colleagues in music and tech journalism are busy answering right this minute. How does it stack up against the big players in streaming music that have stolen business from Apple over the past decade? How do its revamped 24/7 radio stations compare to XM and Pandora? Will the new artist discovery features give music fans a one-stop shop and push SoundCloud out of the burgeoning star game?
These are all worthy things to wonder on the day of the Apple Music launch, and wise words will be written and shared.
And yet isn't there an even deeper, more elemental question? An ur-query, white-hot and pure, from which all other lines of inquiry flow like so much spurting magma?
Is it… fucking… metal?
Of course, Apple Music has oodles of heavy metal; it also has dance pop, "chill" electronic, and "workout anthems". But having metal is a box to tick, an obligation; being metal is a calling, a state of mind.
BuzzFeed News gathered its resident metalheads in the most metal of all collaborative productivity environments — Slack, of the integrated metal emoji — to determine whether the brainchild of Eddie Cue, Dr. Dre, Jimmy Iovine, and the overlords of entertainment technology are committed to the righteous cause of metal, or just pretending.
joe [11:38 AM] ok @channel
joe [11:38 AM] i am about to start looking at how metal apple music is but
joe [11:38 AM] before i start
joe [11:39 AM] let's get predictions from everyone: how metal will apple music be?
ellencushing [11:39 AM] what is our scale
joe [11:40 AM] i'll start with mine— apple is a giant, terrifying, powerful, inscrutable and crushing beast with a bottomless thirst for expansion and the will to power
joe [11:40 AM] that is metal as shit
joe [11:41 AM] on the other hand it's called "apple", which sounds like a twee indie pop band from north carolina
joe [11:41 AM] i'm going with 7 on a scale from 1 to METAL
ellencushing [11:41 AM] that said, EL CAPITAN could definitely be a metal band
ellencushing [11:41 AM] well, maybe
pczki [11:41 AM] My guess is just barely metal enough. I expect unforgivable omissions.
ellencushing [11:41 AM] a bad one:
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