App: iTunes Store
Ad: Stormzy - Heavy Is The Head
Targeted to me?: No
The iTunes Store isn't a social media app, but the Apple media store for books, films and TV shows. It's installed as a default app on iPhones so I thought it would be interesting to see what it tried to sell to me and whether there was any personalisation to it.
The banner ad at the top of the iTunes Store is for Apple Music, but I've decided that I'm not going to sign up to subscription services as part of this experiment unless they sound really intriguing - otherwise I'll forget to cancel things and end up with payments coming out of my bank all the time! As I use Spotify I don't feel like signing up to Apple Music makes sense for me, so I skipped this and looked at the 'Hot Albums' section immediately underneath. The first album on that list is Heavy Is The Head by Stormzy, which came out last month.
I don't think the iTunes Store targets its shop-front to individuals because this album doesn't really fit in with my past iTunes purchases. For a start, it's very rare that I'll buy a whole album on there - I have to have a physical copy - and while I have bought a couple of rap songs over the many years that I've had an iTunes account, my last five purchases were:
- People by The 1975
- break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored by Ariana Grande
- Narcissist by No Rome ft The 1975
- Brass In Pocket by Suede
- Stay Together (Long Version) by Suede
I don't think Stormzy fits in particularly well with that playlist! I'm familiar with Stormzy - in fact, I saw him live at a festival back in 2017 - but he's not an artist I usually choose to listen to, as I'm more of a Britpop person than a grime fan. He is undeniably a huge star at the moment, having headlined Glastonbury, picked up a host of awards and reached number one in the UK with his debut album, Gang Signs & Prayer - the first grime album to hit the top spot. He's in the news this week because his single Own It (featuring Ed Sheeran and Burna Boy) hit number one this week and also because he's involved in a Twitter beef with Wiley (arguably the first grime star to have mainstream success in the 2000s) who is critical of the link-up with Sheeran.
Heavy Is The Head is Stormzy's second album and is currently retailing at £4.99 on iTunes. Unlike the old days when you had to buy a record to hear it all the way through (or curl up at a listening post), in 2020 I don't have to drop £4.99 to try this out, so I hopped over to Spotify to see how it sounds. I don't listen to rap/hip-hop/grime albums very often as I find that the music gets a bit samey after a while but this one didn't become background music midway through like these sorts of records often do for me. That said, I find it hard to pick out individual tracks that stood out to me; I liked the tropical-inspired beats of Own It and Superheroes (which features Stormzy singing the theme song to Tracy Beaker at its outro) but the whole thing sounded pretty good. Like everyone else I've seen and heard enough of Ed Sheeran (did anyone else see Yesterday last summer and wonder what he was doing there?!) but he doesn't overpower Own It so I'll be happy to hear it on the radio now that it's a number one hit.
I think Stormzy has risen to the top of the grime pack because his music has become a lot softer and more commercial as he's become more popular, compared to other rappers in the genre like Giggs and Skepta, whose songs feel charged with violence. Stormzy's lyrics reference his home and the culture he grew up in but somehow it feels more universal; less claustrophobic and less trapped in a specific section of London than his contemporaries.
Overall, I'm not going to buy the album but I'm okay about having listened to it. Since I didn't use the iTunes Store to listen or purchase I don't expect to see more grime on my front page, but I do wonder what it's going to do to my Spotify algorithm...
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