Apple opens its first live music venue beneath its London headquarters

Apple is opening its first live music venue, a 600-capacity space called Apple Music Hall built directly beneath its London headquarters inside Battersea Power Station. According to The Verge, the venue opens on September 28th, while the BBC describes the opening as due in the coming weeks; the opening act has not yet been announced.

The hall will host one-off shows by major artists and new bands, all filmed and broadcast online, according to the BBC. Apple Music vice president Oliver Schusser told the broadcaster the facility contains "more cameras and speakers than any venue of its size, anywhere in the world".

A concert hall that doubles as a production studio

The design aims to combine the closeness of a small club with the production values of an arena broadcast. The stage is 38 feet wide and can be rearranged for conventional front-facing sets or in-the-round performances, and the audience sits within a 48-speaker spatial audio system. The building is hardwired for 16 or more broadcast cameras, with two dedicated recording and mixing studios behind the stage, meaning an artist could record a podcast, appear on a radio show and live-stream a gig in a single day, as the BBC notes.

The BBC's early tour describes fluted vaults and brick-lined walls that echo the power station's Art Deco architecture, with bricks chosen specifically to absorb reflected sound. Dressing rooms come with en-suite showers and costume storage, and the facility adds rooms for DJ mixes, writing camps and band rehearsals.

The hall opens alongside new Apple Music radio studios in the same building. The Verge reports that all of Apple Music's London-based hosts and shows will now broadcast from Battersea, and the BBC notes the radio operation is moving from its current home in King's Cross. Apple Music global creative director Zane Lowe said in Apple's announcement that the goal is connecting artists and fans.

"We're not trying to be in the live business"

The launch arrives at a difficult moment for London's live music sector. The BBC reports that 45 venues closed in the capital last year, part of a national pattern in which roughly 400 British clubs shut between 2020 and 2025 amid rising costs and post-pandemic lifestyle changes — a backdrop that could make a deep-pocketed tech company's arrival uncomfortable for independent venue owners.

Schusser pushed back on that reading. "We're not trying to be in the live business. We're not trying to compete with anyone," he told the BBC, explaining that the hall will sell tickets like any venue but exists to do creative work with artists and broadcast the results on Apple Music. He added that keeping the space small was one way of staying out of rivals' way.

A return to a London tradition

Apple Music Hall marks the company's return to London's live scene after the iTunes Music Festival, which ran for roughly a decade before ending in 2017, as The Verge reports. That series staged free concerts by acts including Lady Gaga, Elton John, Adele and One Direction at venues such as The Roundhouse and Koko, according to the BBC.

The location carries music history of its own: Battersea Power Station, a decommissioned Art Deco plant that reopened as a retail and office district in 2022, appeared on the cover of Pink Floyd's album Animals. UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy called the new venue "a huge vote of confidence in the UK as a global creative powerhouse", according to the BBC.

Why it matters

The venue is best read as a services play rather than a concert promotion business. Apple told the BBC it hopes bespoke live content will distinguish Apple Music from Spotify and Amazon Music, echoing music industry figure Jimmy Iovine's recent warning that streaming services risk becoming obsolete because they do little to connect artists and listeners — in his words, the experience is one-dimensional. A permanently wired hall hands Apple a steady supply of exclusive performances, radio programming and recordings, integrating everything from stage to stream inside one service.

There is also an artist-development argument: Schusser said Apple wants to champion new and upcoming bands at a time when listening habits favour established catalogues, and a small, well-equipped London stage is an efficient way to build that pipeline. Whether a tech giant running a ticketed venue sits comfortably beside a struggling grassroots scene is a question Britain's independent promoters will be watching closely.