Apple TV’s New Fanfare

Tuesday, 16 December 2025

Tim Nudd, writing at Ad Age a few weeks ago (paywalled, alas):

As we mentioned in roundup yesterday, Finneas (aka, Finneas O’Connell) has developed a new sonic logo for Apple TV, the streaming service previously known as Apple TV+. However, the rebrand, created with Apple agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab, goes beyond the audio mnemonics to include a striking new visual look as well.

The visual branding centers on layers of shifting colored light, a metaphor for the range of genres and emotions that Apple TV has cultivated since its 2019 debut.

I held off on posting about this new Apple TV fanfare (a.k.a. sonic logo, a.k.a. mnemonic ) until I’d experienced it a few times, and after a few weeks, watching a bunch of episodes from a few Apple TV series — Mr. Scorsese, a 5-star five-part documentary by Rebecca Miller, absolutely riveting; Pluribus, Vince Gilligan’s excellent new the-less-you-know-about-it-before-you-start-watching-the-better series starring Rhea Seehorn; and The Morning Show season 4, a series that’s skirting just above the good-enough-to-keep-watching line for me — I’m willing to render a verdict.

I love it.

The old one was not bad. But “not bad” should never be good enough for Apple. I can’t find anyone from Apple stating so explicitly, but it seems pretty obvious that the piano chord accompanying the old fanfare was meant to evoke the Macintosh startup chime. That’s a neat idea. And no one is more a fan of the Macintosh than me. I’d argue that the Mac remains the definitive Apple product, the one that best exemplifies everything the company does and should stand for. So harking back to the Macintosh was an interesting idea for the Apple TV fanfare/sonic logo/mnemonic.

But: it just wasn’t great. What makes that chord great for a computer booting up doesn’t make it great for a cinematic sonic logo. Netflix’s “tadum” is so iconic that it’s the name of their company blog. HBO’s static + chanted om is the OG standard-setter. I suspect the new Apple TV fanfare will be seen in that class. The old one was not.

The new one feels like a branding stroke unto itself. Sonically, it doesn’t evoke anything else. It just sounds rich and cool. Visually, with its rotating prism effect, it does evoke the classic six-color Apple logo. Thus, despite moving away from a sonic callback to the Macintosh, the overall effect feels more rooted to Apple’s on-the-cusp-of-a-half-century history. The change makes Apple TV original content feel more like a part of Apple, less like a possible passing fancy (which is what many in Hollywood fear).

That prism effect was created practically. From a LinkedIn post from Apple’s longtime agency partner TBWA Media Arts Lab (no clue why they posted this on LinkedIn, of all places):

Built from real glass and captured entirely in camera, the new identity explores reflection, color, and light to express the cinematic spirit at the heart of Apple TV. Every shimmer was made for real, no CG shortcuts, a nod to Apple’s belief that craft should be felt, not faked.

The work spans the entire platform, from a sharp five-second show open to a full-length cinematic version for films, paired with a new sonic logo composed by Oscar winner Finneas and a custom typeface, SF TV, developed with Apple’s design team.

They include a very short video showing behind the scenes of its creation. It matters not to me that they photographed this practically, rather than via computer-generated graphics, but the bottom line is that it looks cool, timeless, and Apple-y.

Chris Willman at Variety has an interview with Finneas (O’Connell) regarding the music:

Mnemonic, Finneas says, “is sort of a beautiful word for a logo” accompanied by sound. “The things that I think of as real classic mnemonics are NBC — you can hear that in your head — or HBO has its static.” Finneas is well aware of how modern streaming consumption might make this especially ubiquitous, household by household. “If you’re binge-ing the whole season of Ted Lasso or Severance or Disclaimer” (the last of those being the limited series that he composed the score for himself), “you’re going to hear the mnemonic 10 times in one day. So it’s gotta be something that’s like the bite of ginger between rolls or something, you know?”

See and hear for yourself. Here’s the old Apple TV mnemonic:

Here’s the new 5-second version, shown at the beginning of each episode of Apple TV original series:

And here’s the full 12-second version, shown before Apple Original Films:

Bravo.