Apple opens its own 600 seat concert venue at London's Battersea Power Station

Apple has opened its own concert venue right in the heart of London. Apple Music Hall is located in the iconic Battersea Power Station, the building known worldwide as the cover of Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals, and which has served as Apple's UK headquarters since 2023, occupying six floors and more than 500,000 square feet. The venue holds 600 people, a deliberate choice for intimacy, but with a production setup that goes way beyond your average small music venue.

The technical infrastructure at Apple Music Hall is seriously impressive. A 48 speaker Spatial Audio system surrounds the audience completely, so sound comes not just from the front but from every direction. The stage is 38 feet wide and can be configured either as a traditional front facing setup or in the round, with the audience surrounding the artist on all sides. Behind the stage are two full recording and mixing studios, meaning every performance can be captured immediately as a multitrack recording and then mixed in Spatial Audio, both live and in post production. The building is wired for sixteen or more cameras feeding into a dedicated broadcast control room, with iPhone recordings able to run alongside professional broadcast camera systems. As Apple states in a press release, an artist can walk away after a single show with a finished Spatial Audio recording, a broadcast ready mix, and multicamera video.

Performances at Apple Music Hall are also streamed globally, so fans outside London can tune in. Oliver Schusser, Vice President of Apple Music and International Content, puts the opening in a broader context: "Apple's deep love for music dates all the way back to the very beginning, from the launch of the iPod to the long running iTunes Music Festival to the debut of Apple Music. Today, with the opening of Apple Music Hall, we are once again taking an unprecedented step further in our commitment to artists and fans by supporting live music in ways only Apple can do." Zane Lowe, Apple Music's Global Creative Director and regular host of Apple Music 1, added: "We're always looking for new opportunities to connect the artists and the fans because we are fans. What better way to celebrate this relationship than a new music venue where we get to experience amazing music in an amazing space and share it with the world. Great music and memories will be made at Apple Music Hall."

The opening also marks a return to live music for Apple as a company. Between 2009 and 2017, Apple organised an annual concert festival at the Roundhouse in Camden, London, initially called the iTunes Festival and later rebranded as the Apple Music Festival. Over the years it featured artists including Adele, Oasis and Kendrick Lamar. Apple wrapped up the event after 2017, but with Apple Music Hall the company is now choosing a permanent home for live music rather than a yearly one off.

Alongside the concert venue, new radio studios are also opening at Battersea, from which all London based Apple Music Radio presenters and programmes will now broadcast live. Apple Music Radio is free to listen to worldwide and broadcasts around the clock. Apple's radio network already had studios in Los Angeles, New York, Nashville, London, Paris, Berlin and Tokyo, with the Tokyo studio having only opened in April 2025 as the seventh location worldwide. The interior of Apple Music Hall ties in with the industrial architecture of the power station itself, featuring brick walls, ribbed arches, bronze balconies and a glass wall overlooking the concourse and the River Thames.

UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy responded enthusiastically to the opening: "This is a huge vote of confidence in the UK as a global creative powerhouse. When a company of Apple's scale backs British music and talent, it's a signal of just how strong our creative sectors really are." She pointed to the wider context of the British music industry, which contributed a record £8 billion to the economy in 2024 and supports 220,000 jobs. For Dutch music fans, Apple Music Hall is relevant because shows will be streamed globally and recorded content will become available through Apple Music, and because Dutch artists making their move onto the British circuit may well end up performing there too.