Nearly 50 years after the Battersea Power Station appeared on the cover of Pink Floyd‘s Animals, Apple has transformed the decommissioned building into a music venue.
Apple Music Hall will function as both a live music space and production facility, where musicians can record their performance on multitrack. The venue boasts a 38-foot wide stage, a 48-speaker spatial sound system, 16 or more cameras, and a 600-capacity crowd. Essentially, artists can exit with a Spatial Audio recording, a broadcast-ready mix, and multicamera video from a single show.
“Apple’s deep love for music dates all the way back to the very beginning, from the launch of the iPod to the long-running iTunes Music Festival to the debut of Apple Music,” Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Apple Music and International Content, said in a statement. “Today, with the opening of Apple Music Hall, we are once again taking an unprecedented step further in our commitment to artists and fans by supporting live music in ways only Apple can do.”
Animals was released on Jan. 21, 1977, and its legendary cover — the Battersea Power Station, with a George Orwell-esque inflatable pig seen floating in the sky — symbolized industrial greed and the voracious appetites of capitalism (famously, the pig balloon flew away).
The image was created by Hipgnosis Studios’ Storm Thorgerson, and assisted by Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell, who updated the cover for the Animals 2018 Remix in 2022. “Animals is one of my favorite albums by Pink Floyd just because of the stories attached,” Powell recalled in 2022. “I remember going to Battersea Power Station and it was a dump. It was full of coal and debris and broken cars. It was just absolutely horrid. I knocked on the door and a lad answered. I said I was looking for someone important and the chap went, ‘Well, thats me,’ and I said, ‘I want to fly a pig.’”
Performances at Apple Music Hall will be livestreamed globally, while fans can access tickets on the venue’s website.
