Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

To Apple, Love Taylor

taylorswift.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 534 posts

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#91

Post by vacri »

contentfairplay wrote: post #54
contentfairplay wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can anyone at Apple (or perhaps formally at Apple) explain why this is the case? Apple is a super secret walled garden, full of itself. From my experience with people that work there, I doubt any of them would even know why (let alone come out here to explain).

Could you explain the downvotes? I'm new to HN and would like to learn.

Snarky comments (like 'full of itself') tend to gain downmods just for that. It's a lot softer than it used to be, though - it used to be that using the lightest touch of humour would also bring the downmod brigade. HN is becoming a much more generic "tech and this-article-I-saw-on-nytimes" site.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#92

Post by davegardner »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #39
sarreph wrote: post #3

> These are not the complaints of a spoiled, petulant child. I am starting to doubt that Taylor Swift really is as 'representative' as she wishes to portray, and not simply greedy, considering the extent to which she avoids non-profit-maximising revenue streams (e.g. Spotify).

She avoids Spotify because they wouldn't let her music be only available for paying users. Basically, she refuses to be ad-supported, or give her music away.

Well that's not entirely true, since her music is available on YouTube.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#94

Post by kristianc »

Apple Music's big problem is that the service itself offers nothing new - most of the people that are going to paid for paid music will use Spotify already, and getting them to switch will be hard.

I suspect that Apple knows that the take up for the three month free trial will be huge, but that conversion to paid will be a much harder row to hoe.

This is all about Apple not wanting to foot the bill if and when people switch back to what they were doing already (Spotify, YouTube) without paying Apple a dime.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#95

Post by mcintyre1994 »

jws wrote: post #50
mnx wrote: post #11

It seems really weird to me that apple would get away with paying nothing for the 3 months. Especially since it's not like they are anything but yet another competitor in an already crowded space.

This whole "pay nothing" idea is strange to see on HN. Apple developed the software, is footing the server, power, bandwidth, and ops bills for three months all for free. The labels are chipping in their content for three months. Sounds like everyone is bringing something to the table. Apple is incurring real costs. The labels, not so much. Three kinds of customers will try the service: People who buy their music: th…

I get the typical arguments that things being available free might not affect sales - but in this case I think they'll see a direct impact.

I think they'll get a pretty large amount of trial users simply by advertising it in iTunes - oh you're about to buy this album? Why don't you listen to it and the majority of our catalog free for three months instead?

Other than Android they have a lot of music use cases supported, free of charge - why would you buy?

I honestly don't know how much this will affect sales but Apple are certainly in a position to push users away from those sales and toward the free service.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#96

Post by nicolas_t »

fordh wrote: post #61
briandear wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not defending apple for not paying artists, but I will defend their 'weaseling' out of US taxes. U.S. Corporate taxes are among the highest in the world and until Washington starts lowering their confiscatory tax rates, I would encourage all businesses to avoid repatriating earnings. A 10% tax rate is high enough.

I was curious and looked up this claim. Turns out PolitiFact looked into it: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/... The conclusion: Bolling said the United States has "the highest corporate tax rate in the free world." He was referring to the statutory rate, meaning the rate before deductions. On that score, he’s right: The United States does have the highest statutory rate among developed co…

There's also some countries that have relatively "low tax rate" but very high social security costs which are not always counted as tax rates by studies.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#98

Post by maxerickson »

aikah wrote: post #73
morganvachon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised. I'm not a fan of her music (if I had kids they probably would be) but she's very hands-on with her image and if it's on her tumblr page, she wrote it. I respect her as a person and from what I've seen she's very intelligent and articulate.

She absolutely didn't write that, she has an entire PR firm at her disposal. The same way most politicians do not write any of their speeches. Do you really think most "stars" directly manage their "own" tumblr,facebook or twitter accounts? of course not.

I got vilified as a troll on reddit for suggesting such a thing. A reply to me earnestly said something to the effect of: I don't know anything about twitter, but I'm sure follows .

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#99

Post by hahainternet »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #28
hahainternet wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand I could argue that making apple pay leads to fewer/smaller free trials which leads to less money for the artists. How? The trials would still be free. Nothing would change for the consumer, therefore you couldn't argue that.

Let's have a hypothetical scenario with simplified numbers. The trial distributes $20M in music and leads to $10M more in customers after a year. Half the revenue goes to Apple, half to the artists. If Apple doesn't pay the artists for the trial, then they run the trial and get $5M extra profit. The artists get $5M extra profit. The audience gets more music. Everyone wins. If Apple pays the artists for the trial, the…

> They don't run the trial. Nobody wins.

Their competitors win. The artists make out the same or better. Apple isn't the only player on the market, even though they act that way.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#100

Post by sauere »

zymhan wrote: post #84
sauere wrote: post #80

> Three months is a long time to go unpaid, and it is unfair to ask anyone to work for nothing. It is safe to assume that max. 10% of the subscribers will be in this 3 month trial. You will make money from the other 90%. Also, just a little industry insight: Taylor makes $1.5m+ at each concert, plus travel, hotel, technical rider. I have a very hard time understanding all this cry baby talk.

You have any data to support that? And if that's true, then Apple should be taking the hit up front, not the artists. Your last point is just irrelevant and unnecessary.

I worked in the live music industry and have a pretty good idea of these numbers. But you can just google up some leaked booking agreements (The Smoking Gun has some pdfs).

Yes, obviously a lot of people must be paid from that fee (crew, management, band...), but it is still shitload of cash.

Post reply on HN