‘Carpool Karaoke’ to become Apple Music series

Michelle Obama

NEW YORK: “Carpool Karaoke,” the viral late-night television skit in which celebrities from Adele to Michelle Obama sing along in a moving car, is expanding to Apple Music.
The tech giant and CBS television, which broadcasts the recurring segment as part of “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” announced Tuesday that “Carpool Karaoke” will become a 16-episode series for Apple Music.
Corden will still air “Carpool Karaoke” on his show but a new version — with a host to be determined — will appear on Apple Music, the company’s streaming service launched last year.
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, said the series was “a perfect fit” for the service by offering exclusive footage with artists and celebrities.
“The joy of ‘Carpool’ is both the intimacy it creates, while seeing the love our passengers have for music,” Ben Winston, executive producer of “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” said in a statement.
Corden introduced the skit last year to his show and it has quickly taken on a life beyond late-night television, with more than 830 million total views on YouTube.
The most successful starred British ballad singer Adele, who showed a close-up and laid-back side to herself despite her phenomenal commercial success.
Adele’s segment has been seen more than 119 million times on YouTube in six months, the most ever for a segment from the world of late-night television comedy.
A segment with First Lady Michelle Obama along with rapper Missy Elliott came out five days ago and has been seen more than 32 million times.
Other stars who have appeared on “Carpool Karaoke” include Justin Bieber, One Direction, Elton John, Jennifer Lopez and Stevie Wonder.
Apple, which revolutionized music consumption when it launched iTunes in 2001, last year made a concerted push into the booming area of streaming through Apple Music.
The company says the service has drawn 15 million subscribers but it still trails leader Spotify, which said it had 28 million paying subscribers at the end of 2015.
Apple and rap mogul Jay Z’s upstart rival Tidal have tried to distinguish themselves with exclusive content as well as more integration with video than Spotify.
With its knack for technological innovation, Apple has long seemed invincible although its quarterly profits announced Tuesday slumped 27 percent from a year earlier.