Slightly more than 20 years after its initial launch in January 2001, Apple’s digital music platform (originally iTunes, now Apple Music) is celebrating a library of one hundred million songs. And because there’s no way a mere mortal could listen to all that music, Apple is kicking off a new way to recommend music to you—one song at a time. Apple claims it’s “More music than you can listen to in a lifetime, or several lifetimes,” but is that actually true? Well, yes. It’s very true. Even if you were to lowball an estimate that all of Apple Music’s 100 million tracks average out to one minute each (the average is almost certainly longer than that). At just one minute long, it would still take you over 190 years of nonstop listening to go through everything. With such a vast library of music, Apple expects you might have a tough time figuring out what to listen to. So rather than leaning on algorithmic recommendations (though those are still in there), Apple Music is starting its new Apple Music Today series. Every day, the series will highlight a new song and take a look at the history behind it. At that rate, Apple Music should have an episode dedicated to all of the songs currently in its library in another… 273,973 years or so. You can check out Apple Music Today right now if you’re an Apple Music subscriber, starting with Sinead O’Connor’s 1990 breakout hit “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
