When Apple Music released its 100 Best Albums List early in 2024, curated by a survey of editors from across the spectrum of music critics and journalists, it became both viral and controversial, gathering quite a bit of attention.
Now, Apple is preparing a hard-cover book of that list, that has an incredible initial selling price of $450!
Maybe Apple is banking on the attention the list got, but it also may be the fact that it will be published in cooperation with luxury lifestyle brand Assouline, which is preparing only 1,500 copies, with their individual edition numbers etched on the covers.
The interiors will also be hand-numbered, while the pages are said to bear gilded edges. Each of the 100 essays will be accompanied by full-page album illustrations, and the whole thing will feature a foreword from Zane Lowe, the Creative Director of Apple Music 1 radio.
“If our list sparks more debate among fans outside of Apple Music and gets people talking passionately about the music they love, then we’ve done what we set out to do,” says Zane Lowe, global creative director and co-head of artist relations at Apple Music.
The announcement has unsurprisingly sparked wide-ranging reactions from commenters on Twitter (now “X”), as music fans criticized the cover price and roasted the list itself all over again.
If you can afford it, the book can be pre-ordered here.
Assouline describes the book as:
Encompassing more than 65 years of music—and multiple genres, from country, pop, and rock to hip-hop and electronic—the list spans from 1959, with Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, to as recently as Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti, which debuted in 2022. The list, which includes artists as stylistically diverse as Billie Eilish and Metallica, Travis Scott and Talking Heads, invited spirited conversations around the world.
