Apple Music and Twitter recently came together to integrate with popular DJ battle series Verzuz. Apple Music’s Larry Jackson helped bring in Twitter, alongside artists likes Swizz and Timbaland, and has revealed how he pulled it off.
Apple Exec Helps Broker Verzuz Deal
“I think Tim and Swizz were blown away by what we were able to offer — 1080p high-definition video and high-fidelity audio, coupled with something we’ve never done at Apple, which is the social-engagement interface,” Mr. Jackson told Variety. “These kinds of broadcasts are usually a linear video stream with no social-chat engagement, and it was really important to figure out that element. So Jack [Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and CEO] opened up the coding, engineering and design teams at Twitter to help us integrate it into the live broadcast. You’re seeing the manifestation of that work now; with Snoop and DMX we had GIFs and emojis as part of the inline social element.”
Meanwhile, Twittter’s Jack Dorsey descrived his firm as the conversation layer on top of that, enabling fans to mix it up on their own and extend the discussion past the boundaries of the event time.”
Stream Soar
The Verzuz collaboration is working out for the artists involved too with streams of their music up by an average of 200% over a number of weeks. “This is the best idea for catalog [promotion] since I got involved in music streaming eight years ago,” Mr. Jackson said.