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To Apple, Love Taylor

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Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#221

Post by sanswork »

pmorici wrote: post #192
w4 wrote: post #186

For everyone suggesting that artists are simply being greedy or unreasonable in expecting Apple to pay them during the trial period, I'd encourage you to consider the hypothetical I posted in the last thread about Apple Music's 3 month trial. It might help contextualize the artists' and labels' complaints: > Tomorrow, Apple announces that it will be introducing an "App Store Subscription." For $9.99/month users will…

That sounds like an amazing offer. who wouldn't want to trade a one time free or 99 cent payment for recurring revenue.

Well you have to split that $10/month with all the other apps that the user accessed that month(on average). So it's quite likely that your somewhat successful app wouldn't even reach the 99 cents anymore let alone 99 cents per user.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#222

Post by lhc- »

threeseed wrote: post #141
sanswork wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they do have something to lose if they put it on. They will have a lower profit if listeners that would subscribe to another paying service or buy their music switch to Apple streaming.

> They will have a lower profit You have zero evidence of this. We don't know and may not know for a number of years whether Apple Music is more profitable for artists (or not) than competitor services.

We know for a fact that its going to be less profitable for at least three months, unless they were already making zero dollars.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#223

Post by w4 »

sanswork wrote: post #221
pmorici wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like an amazing offer. who wouldn't want to trade a one time free or 99 cent payment for recurring revenue.

Well you have to split that $10/month with all the other apps that the user accessed that month(on average). So it's quite likely that your somewhat successful app wouldn't even reach the 99 cents anymore let alone 99 cents per user.

Right - and now further imagine that your app is actually making decent money before the introduction of the subscription model (like Taylor Swift does off records). How pleased with this arrangement are you going to be? I'd posit not very.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#224

Post by Fargren »

themartorana wrote: post #214
Fargren wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most software engineers (employees) are paid for crafting their software, not for having crafted in the past. That's exactly what I advocate for. We absolutely should pay people for working! I'm saying that those who distribute should be compensated for the distribution, and those who craft should be compensated for the crafting. And everyone should be free to do either, to the best of their abilities.

This is not true at all. Many consultants may in fact be paid once. But most developers work at companies for a salary. That salary is paid for by charging for software over and over. Without being able to charge multiple times for the same piece of software, there would be no Microsoft, IBM, or Oracle, no SaaS, and no App Store, just to name a few, and none of the jobs that come along.

But if they stop working, they are not paid anymore. They are effectively compensated for the act of working, not for some ownership over the work they've done.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#225

Post by CPLX »

kbrwn wrote: post #26

Can anyone at Apple (or perhaps formally at Apple) explain why this is the case? It seems like a raw deal that no sane musician would ever agree to. Imagine if when the first iPhone came out AT&T told Apple they were giving every customer a free trial with the device for 3 months before they pay for it Apple would have laughed and chose another carrier for its exclusive deal. I don't agree with the model of payment t…

> imagine if developers recieved payment everytime a user used and app

If software developers were compensated for their creative output the way musicians are there wouldn't be so many software developers.

I had a really innovative startup idea once where I planned to have developers work for years to create hit software products that made many people's life better and then get into a crappy van and travel the country to do 90 minute demos of their product for a few hundred dollars.

But only if they had a genuinely successful product mind you, obviously being merely competent at software development meant you didn't get paid at all, you had to actually amass significant numbers of fans of your products willing to come to these demos.

Never did figure out why I didn't get more developers interested in the platform.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#226

Post by ixtli »

In 215 comments no one that I could find has mentioned that, while well-intentioned, this post comes off as somewhat disingenuous because Apple does not deal directly with the artists. The entire (pretty well-written) thing doesn't mention _at all_ that the majority of musicians do not deal directly with distributors. Think about it: how are Apple/Google/Spotify/Amazon going to deal directly with 10 million individuals? The answer is that they don't.

I think anyone can agree that Apple is being shitty by not paying for something they're making money on, the people who are directly responsible for not compensating the artists are, rather conspicuously, left out of this rant.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#229

Post by ixtli »

ehosca wrote: post #51

does Taylor Swift herself have full autonomy over determining how/when her music can be played?

I just posted about this at the top level, but thank you for being a critical thinker: Taylor Swift _may_ deal directly with a distributer but only because she's mega-ultra-super successful. 99% of musicians use third parties to get their music to distributors. You do not do deals directly with Spotify: you sign up with ASCAP and tell them the gist of where you want your music.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#230

Post by IBM »

Apple made their response to this a few days ago in this Recode article. http://recode.net/2015/06/15/heres-what-happens-to-your-10-a...

>Apple won’t pay music owners anything for the songs that are streamed during Apple Music’s three-month trial period, a bone of contention with music labels during negotiations for the new service. But Kondrk says Apple’s payouts are a few percentage points higher than the industry standard, in part to account for the lengthy trial period; most paid subscription services offer a free one-month trial.

I wonder if all of these complaints would go away if Apple said they weren't going to offer higher payouts overall but would pay during the free-trial?

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