“Loren [Kramar]’s an unsigned artist,” said Apple VP Eddy Cue to the WWDC audience on Monday while unveiling Apple Music. “I just started following him. He posted a new song right up on Connect. This is the first time anyone’s ever heard it.”
It seemed like Apple was giving an up-and-coming unknown musician the opportunity of a lifetime — but, there’s much more to the story. According to a report by The Next Web, Kramar may not have been the undiscovered diamond in the rough he appeared to be. The report suggests he has a friend in Joe Weinberger, who used to be an A&R rep under Jimmy Iovine at Interscope Records. The same Iovine who now holds an executive position at Apple Music.
As the report notes, Kramar is a visual artist and co-founder of an art magazine called Megazine. Notably, Kramar has posted no music on iTunes or Spotify. We also couldn’t find any of his music on YouTube, though that doesn’t mean it isn’t hiding in some dark corner of the massive video site. His unverified Twitter profile — which was reportedly created only minutes after his Apple Music debut — has 440 followers, and he has no other presence on social media.
It seems that while Kramar does have a musical past as a cabaret singer, he also has a few celebrity connections. The Capital New York profile noted that his father is a “wealthy scrap metal magnate,” and that he attended “the prestigious Campbell Hall, a hotbed for Hollywood kids” where he performed in a play with Elizabeth Olsen — one of the Olsen twins — and took Tony Danza’s daughter, Katie, to a formal dance.
We’re not sure if these connections led to Kramar being profiled by Apple Music to millions of live streamers, but they hint that he probably isn’t the unknown, independent artist Cue made him out to be. Regardless of how Kramar ended up on this international stage, it appears that Apple is hoping to help him blow up.
“Loren Kramar, remember that name,” said Cue. “We think he’s going to be really, really huge.”
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