Apple Opens Apple Music Hall, a New High-Tech Music Venue in London

The 600-capacity venue combines live music, Spatial Audio, broadcast production, and multicamera video under one roof.

Apple is getting deeper into live music.

The company has opened Apple Music Hall, a new 600-capacity music venue inside London’s Battersea Power Station designed to bring artists unusually close to fans while offering the production capabilities of a much larger venue.

And this isn't just another concert hall.

Apple has essentially built a live performance studio.

The venue features a 38-foot-wide configurable stage and a 48-speaker spatial sound system surrounding the audience. Behind the stage are two professional recording and mixing studios capable of capturing performances as multitrack recordings and mixing them in Spatial Audio.

Apple Music Hall is also hardwired for 16 or more cameras, with a dedicated broadcast control room capable of combining traditional production cameras with iPhone footage.

The result: An artist can play one 600-person show and walk away with a Spatial Audio recording, broadcast-ready mix, and multicamera video of the performance. Apple can then livestream the show to a global audience.

The venue also gives Apple Music something streaming alone can't provide: a physical home for music culture.

Apple has played in this territory before. The company launched the iTunes Festival in London in 2007, eventually evolving it into the Apple Music Festival before ending the series in 2017. Apple Music Hall takes that idea and makes it permanent.

Apple is also relocating its London-based Apple Music Radio shows and hosts to new studios at Battersea.

For a company that helped transform how an entire generation bought and listened to music, Apple is now investing in another part of the experience:

where music actually happens.