Are we waiting for Apple's entertainment bundle?
Apple plans to offer a bundle containing music, video, magazines and even iCloud storage. It is the total of Apple’s entertainment content and in that sense it is not surprising to bundle it. But do we want such a bundle? That depends mainly on what is in it, of course. Music is easy: Apple Music is more than adequate and if you only have Apple devices a great choice. With video, however, it is a different story: despite the billion-dollar investment from Apple in that branch of sport, they only have two series that you can watch: Carpool Karaoke and Planet of the Apps.
The rest of the content for that new video service including new series by Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, is all still in the making. It is also not clear where that video content is going to ‘live’. The two series that are now fooled into Apple Music and that requires a rebrand from Apple Music to Apple Entertainment ™ or a separate app for video. A universal app would be handy anyway, because then it might also be possible to integrate Texture, the ‘Netflix for magazines’ that Apple took over .
Strange combination
Honestly, it’s all a bit weird. The buyers of music, video, magazines and the people who need storage for iCloud are not immediately a group where you expect a lot of overlap. If Apple wants to bundle these services they will have to come up with a nice price and that is not the strong point of Apple. However, it is the only weapon they have if they want to sell this bundle somewhere next year. The video content will not be competitive with what a Netflix or even Amazon Prime can offer, Apple Music is still lagging behind on Spotify and writing online reading is at best a niche.
So now to say that we are already ready to start consuming this: no. For people who currently pay for three of the four things, it’s nice to have a collection subscription that makes it all a bit cheaper, but if Apple wants to win souls with its (new) services, it has to be stunted. Most people are already comfortable in their entertainment package and then the arguments have to be better than free iCloud storage and a handful of series that might be fun.