While many may have been taken aback by the recent news that Apple’s new streaming service “Apple Music” will not be paying its artists during its three-month pilot period, and shocked by the announcement that they’ll now be paying artists a voucher for a free Denny’s Grand Slam per 10 million streams, and were perhaps even more uproarious about the more recent announcement that the 500 least-streamed artists on this platform will be hunted and killed by Apple’s patented T-800 robots at the end of the three-month trial, even those with the most disdain for the multi-billion dollar monolith were on their knees in worship at the reveal of their newest feature, the memory-wiping “Unlisten”.
Inspired by Google’s new feature, “Unsend”, which allows users to recant emails after sending them, Apple Unlisten’s open beta launched last Sunday, June 21st. Those who sign up for the “Unlisten” open beta will have access to an extensive database of every single song and artist they’ve ever listened to in their life, and, at the click of a mouse, users will have the ability to have any song they’ve ever listened to wiped from their memory, erasing any catchy lyrics, instrumentation, and fondest childhood memories of the dear friend that turned them onto the song that may still be lingering in their head.
“We thought it’d be a great idea,” Apple Music CEO Craig Jonas said in a press release. “One of my colleagues came into the office one day and said, ‘Man, did you hear that new Shinedown single? Man, what I wouldn’t give to unlisten to that monstrosity.’ We just stared at each other in amazement at the idea we had just birthed.”
“While we probably shouldn’t be surprised by how easily our users have been willing to give up their social security number, credit card information, name of their hometown, brain scans, and a strand of their hair for us to be able to acquire this information about them, like damn, just how much do these people trust us?”
Listeners have voiced their unanimous excitement at this innovative new feature.
“I think it’ll come in handy,” says Andy Johnston, 20. “Now the next time one of my douche friends links me the latest Rebecca Black song on my Facebook timeline, I can know that I can listen to it without being left with battle scars.”
“I’m absolutely thrilled,” Mark “The Bloodied” James, 27, told us in between his daily animal sacrifices. “Now all my fellow metalhead friends can’t shame me for liking that latest Charli XCX album, because now thanks to Unlisten, I can just forget that that album ever existed.”
We recently reached out to Mark again for further comment after testing Apple Unlisten, and his paranoid, stammered-out response simply went, “Who are you? Who am I? What have you done to me?”
(contributed by guest correspondent Jess Casebeer from Northwest Music Scene)
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