WHO IS LOREN KRAMAR?

There’s been much chatter in the press surrounding Loren Kramar, the independent artist featured in the Apple Music announcement. Who is this young singer/songwriter? How did he land this very big look? What was his prior experience with the biz? We decided to get the answers straight from the horse’s mouth.

So much is being said about your song’s spotlight during the Apple Music intro. What’s the real behind-the-music story?
It’s been flattering to watch the speculation, but the real story is that I’ve been making music for many years. Two years ago when I wrote the song “My Life,” I knew that there was something to it worth pursuing, so I started working on an album with the same producer, Jorge Elbreckt, who produced “My Life.” [Kramar subsequently began working with a business partner, Joe Weinberger.] We took a few meetings with labels here and there, but ultimately decided that it would make sense for me just to focus in on my craft and further hone my songs.

Last summer, I met Larry Jackson, who had just left his post at Interscope and was signing a new deal at Apple to join forces again with Jimmy Iovine. When Jimmy and Larry ended up at Apple, we hounded them to listen to the music, but they kept saying that they weren’t in the business of signing new artists in the conventional sense. They did accept my emailed songs, though, and wrote back saying that they were working on a new and exciting platform for established artists and unsigned artists alike to expose their music. I had pretty much forgotten about the encounter until I received a cryptic call last weekend asking if it was okay for Apple to feature and debut my song during their WWDC presentation.

You ‘d been pitching your music other places, but ironically the guy who genuinely had the most interest happened to be a former head of A&R who was bolting out of the door to pivot into a technology company.
Exactly. Though he’d left the traditional label system, Larry was the creative guy in our orbit who was by far the most passionate—but his interest baffled us given that he worked at Apple. We chose to subscribe to the good ol’-fashioned, Hollywood mystique. And the approach is apparently so shockingly different and counterintuitive to how people approach marketing in this day and age, that I attribute that as to why my story is being scrutinized and dissected like I’m a politician running for public office. This is all from our gut, and I always strongly felt that being more of an original was worth every bit of the risk—so far, I don’t regret it.

The single is out now, but your album will come out on the Apple Music service?
The album will come out this year. We don’t know the details of how we’re going to do that, but I imagine I’ll be releasing the album via Apple Connect.

You’ve been accused by the media of having “celebrity connections,” and that’s how you got into position with Apple. Address that.
It’s just not the reality. I’m from L.A., and I got a full-tuition scholarship to one of the best art schools in the country, Cooper Union in New York. I took five years to graduate from college, then moved back to L.A. to work as a writer and creative director for an online magazine. That inspired me to move back to New York to start my own online magazine with my own team, but all the while, I was making music. I would perform frequently at parties and at clubs. I also did some co-writes for an album called No World by the band INC. They’re friends. I was writing hundreds of songs and have been since high school—thank God none of those ever came out—and waiting to release it in a way that felt comfortable, where I was confident in the music I was releasing. So there you have it—Tony Danza did not have a role in my music being debuted at Apple’s WWDC event [laughs].