Apple Has Opened Its Own Concert Venue in London. Here's What Apple Music Hall Is For

Apple has opened a concert venue. Not a pop-up, not a sponsored stage at someone else's festival, but a proper 600-seat hall of its own inside Battersea Power Station in London, called Apple Music Hall. It opened on 21 September, and it is one of those announcements that sounds like it has nothing to do with the iPhone in your pocket until you look at what it is for.

What it is

The hall sits by the river in the old power station, with the heritage brickwork and arches kept and a glass wall looking out over the concourse. It holds 600 people, which is small enough that every seat is close to the stage, and the stage itself is 38 feet wide and can be set up facing the audience or in the round. Around the room are 48 speakers arranged for Spatial Audio, so when an artist performs in spatial, the audience hears it the way it was mixed rather than from a stack at the front.

Behind the stage is where it gets interesting. There are two recording and mixing studios built to professional standards, and the room is wired for 16 or more cameras feeding a broadcast control room, with iPhone video capture running alongside the broadcast cameras. The idea, in Apple's words, is that an artist can play one intimate show and walk out with a finished Spatial Audio recording, a broadcast mix and multi-camera video, all from the same night.

Why it matters if you are not in London

Because the shows are streamed. Apple says performances from the hall will be livestreamed globally, so the one-off concerts that happen there will turn up on Apple Music and the Apple TV app for everyone with a subscription, and recorded in Spatial Audio for AirPods and HomePod. If you have ever put on a live album in Spatial Audio and been surprised by how much it feels like being in the room, this is a venue built to make that the normal way concerts are recorded.

At the same time, every London-based Apple Music Radio host and show has moved into new studios in the same building, so the radio side of Apple Music, which is free whether or not you subscribe, now comes out of Battersea too.

Tickets

Shows and tickets are handled at applemusichall.com, with announcements on the venue's Instagram and TikTok at @applemusichall. Apple has not said how often it will stage shows or how tickets are allocated, so if you are a fan of a particular artist the sensible move is to follow the account and keep an eye on it, because a 600-seat room will sell out in minutes.

It is a lovely thing for London to have, and a reminder that Apple Music is not only an app. If you have the subscription and have never tried Spatial Audio with a pair of AirPods, the live recordings that come out of this room will be a good place to start, and if you would like a hand setting any of that up, you know where I am.

Alex