“I really think this is the one that I want them to hear. I love this one”: Finneas writes new three-second ‘mnemonic’ for Apple TV

Finneas O’Connell, aka Finneas, also aka the elder brother of Billie Eilish, has revealed he’s finished what might well become his biggest hit to date, one that's more ubiquitous than Birds Of A Feather or indeed any of the songs he’s written with his sister.

It’s a short sound that will greet viewers on Apple TV for years to come. Finneas is calling it a ‘mnemonic’. But you could also call it an aural ident, a jingle or a start-up sound, we guess.

In an interview with Variety, Finneas revealed that he had been approached by David Taylor, Apple TV’s Head Of Music with the brief: “They were talking about the future of Apple TV and how they were, to some degree, simplifying it, starting with it no longer being Apple TV+.

"They had this new logo graphic and they needed a new piece of music to go with it. That’s such a short amount of time to have something be effective, but also be sort of memorable, and so that was the challenge and also the fun part here.”

He continued: “Because it was so short, I initially thought, ‘Well, maybe I’ll make like 10 of these. I’ll make a bunch of options, and then they’ll like something in the 10, or even if they don’t like something in the 10, they’ll give me good feedback and I’ll make another one.’

"But as I started working on this one and started pouring more and more layers into it and more and more dimensionality, it felt rich enough that I was like, ‘I really think this is the one that I want them to hear. I love this one.’”

Finneas isn’t the first high-profile artist to be commissioned to write such a short piece for music for a corporate client. Thirty years ago, Brian Eno was asked to come up with a three second start up sound for Windows 95. In the end he delivered a six-second piece, for which he got paid the princely sum of $35,000. That’s $5833 per second. Nice work, if you can get it...

It’s not known how much Finneas was paid for his efforts. In an Instagram post on Monday he sounded pleased, saying: “Never thought I’d get to do something like this but I am so honoured and truly couldn’t have enjoyed working on it more.”