I’ve spent the last week working on our review of the year, and even having lived through it, I was surprised at how much invention, debate and controversy 2015 has packed in. Here’s my pick of the launches that have been most intriguing.

 

 

A really obvious choice, I know, but there were several surprises about Apple’s entry into the streaming market. Some were good: the quality and depth of its curated playlists, and the artist-hosted shows on Beats 1. Others were less positive: how could a service pre-hyped on the importance of paying artists nearly launch a free trial that… wouldn’t have paid artists. Apple Music’s mis-steps were as interesting as its successes – a trend I suspect may continue into 2016.

 

 

A feature rather than a standalone service, but a fascinating one. The industry has spent too much time gabbing about the false clash between humans and algorithms, when it seems clear that the future of streaming hinges on clever combinations of the two. Discover Weekly being a great example: an algorithmically-generated weekly playlist for every Spotify user, based on deep data-diving into how the humans on the service put their own playlists together. I’m eager to see what else comes from Spotify’s data team next year.

 

 

Okay, this is a relaunch rather than a brand new launch, but the sight of Kobalt forming a global collecting society, then striking licensing deals with Apple Music and YouTube, might just have been the stealthiest revolution of 2015. Kobalt’s mantra of technology and transparency has already had a big impact in the publishing world, while its label services team have made some interesting moves too. But the sight of CEO Willard Ahdritz roasting traditional collecting societies in recent interviews hints at the potential for his company’s biggest disruption yet in the coming years.

 

 

It’s been a bit of a lacklustre year for new music startups, if I’m honest: a lot of froth and not much substance. But Jukedeck grabbed my attention with a philosophical challenge: what if algorithms COULD compose music good enough to pass for human works? Its artificial intelligence can whip up a track based on the desired mood, style, tempo and length of its clients – initially independent video makers who need a soundtrack. “Giving everyone in the world their own composer” (as the CEO put it) is going to ruffle lots of feathers, but I’m really keen to understand how that debate – and this technology – is going to play out in 2016, including the implications for my musician friends.

 

 

Like a lot of music-industry journalists, my ability to explain blockchain technology in any kind of depth was questionable at the start of 2015. But thanks to Berklee College’s Rethink Music report and music folk including Zoe Keating, Benji Rogers and Imogen Heap, by the end of the year the blockchain was firmly on the industry’s agenda, including for us hacks. And Heap in particular got stuck in to the practical questions of how blockchain technology might work for musicians, building her Mycelia platform and releasing her own song through it to help her peers understand the potential. And with a hackathon already planned for the spring, she’s only just getting started.