Apple has opened its first live music venue. Apple Music Hall holds 600 people and sits inside Battersea Power Station in London. 48 speakers surround the audience. Most venues stack the sound at the front and point it at you. Here it comes from every direction. So when an artist performs in Spatial Audio, you hear the real mix. Not a stereo version of it.
600 capacity is closer to a club than a concert hall. Every seat is near the stage.
The stage is 38 feet wide and can be moved. Artists can play facing forward, or with the crowd on all four sides. The speakers already work in every direction, so the sound holds up behind the performer. Most rooms cannot do that.
A glass wall looks out over the concourse and the Thames.
There are two mix studios behind the stage. Every show is recorded multitrack and can be mixed in Spatial Audio, live or later.
Normally that means hiring a recording truck, bringing in engineers, then booking a studio weeks later to mix it. Here it is on site. The cameras work the same way. Most venues rig cameras for the night and pull them out the next morning. Here the camera runs are built in and feed a control room on site. Shows stream worldwide.
So you play one night and leave with three finished things. A Spatial Audio master, a broadcast mix, and multicamera video. Normally that is weeks of work after the gig.
The control room also takes video from iPhones, running alongside proper broadcast cameras.
A promoter would not build this. The economics only work because Apple is not one. Promoters make money on tickets and the bar, and on 600 seats this equipment would not pay for itself.
Apple makes its money on what the show becomes afterwards, so the building is designed around the recording rather than the ticket sales. That is why a 600-seat room has equipment usually found at arena scale.
Apple Music Radio’s London hosts now broadcast from new studios in the same building.
“We’re always looking for new opportunities to connect the artists and the fans because we are fans,” said Zane Lowe, Apple Music’s global creative director.
Ticket details are at applemusichall.com, with show announcements through @applemusichall on Instagram and TikTok. Performances are livestreamed globally, so shows are not limited to the 600 people in the room.
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