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To Apple, Love Taylor

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Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#261

Post by gdubs »

jacalata wrote: post #252
gdubs wrote: post #245

Couple of thoughts here: 1) If you're an indie artist and you can afford to opt-out of Apple Music on principle, then clearly you can afford to opt-in for the three free months. Either way you're not making money from Apple Music. If you opt-in, you make more money in the long-term. If you opt-out, you continue to earn from your current streaming and downloads. 2) If you think that Apple Music will be so earth-shatte…

How does (1) apply? Are there indie artists who are opting out?

A lot of it is all posturing right now, but there has been news of indie labels considering boycotting Apple Music, for instance:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/16/apple_nopayforplays_...

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#262

Post by spullara »

donarb wrote: post #242
ixtli wrote: post #226

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 individua…

Exactly. And my question is forget the digital part of it. How did this work in the days of records and CDs when promotional copies were given away? Sure most went to radio stations for airplay, but others were given away. Did the artist get any money for those copies or was that part of the record companies' marketing budget?

The artists paid for those copies themselves when they paid back the record companies for marketing.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#264

Post by IBM »

cwyers wrote: post #251
IBM wrote: post #230

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…

That's disingenuous; other streaming services pay for streams by free users.

What's disingenuous about it? If Apple said that they'd pay during the free-trial but went back to the same industry standard rates would any of these artists still be complaining? I don't think so, they stand to benefit more overall from a service that will offer them higher payouts than the payment they get during the free-trial. The artists/labels complaining would obviously prefer that Apple offer the higher payout AND pay them during the trial, but that's why this is nothing more than a business negotiation being played out in public.

The fact is that Apple is paying for music during the free-trial, in higher and on-going payments.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#265

Post by jdjb »

charlesdenault wrote: post #144
rsync wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Per the RIAA, the entire recorded music industry in the US recorded under $7 Billion in revenue in 2014." Amazing. We think of the RIAA, or "big music" as some kind of juggernaut force in society and politics - especially Internet politics. But their entire industry top line is smaller than what fedex makes in a month .[1] [1] http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fdx/revenue-eps

That's astonishing. I'd be interested in seeing some more statistics on the amount of lobbying vs market size compared to other industries (e.g. Transportation, Hospitality, Pharma).

Something tells me we'd see a direct correlation between the amount of lobbying and the amount of legal backing your "product" needs in order to have value (copyright protection, patents, brand trademarks, etc).

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#266

Post by cozzyd »

threeseed wrote: post #158
kristianc wrote: post #94

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…

Apple Music does offer a number of features over Spotify: a) Siri. With the existing Music app I can tell Siri to play a particular artist or playlist. I would expect far deeper integration. b) Watch. The Music app is native, has a glance. c) Desktop. Spotify client on the desktop is slow and clunky. iTunes on the Mac is anything but.

You don't have to use the Spotify client; for example Clementine supports Spotify.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#267

Post by jmilloy »

Presumably, the labels are responsible, not Apple. Apple represents Apple's interests, while the labels are supposed to represent the artists'. Though in practice, the labels probably represent their own.

So, presumably, the labels have decided that offering their content for free to Apple for 3 months will result in more revenue in the future, just as Apple has. Surely any artist understands the idea of giving away their music in order to build a paying fan base in the future.

Ultimately, any artists who lose a significant chunk of income due to these 3-month trials and never see increased income after the trials should be upset with their label's failure to represent them well.

Then again, isn't that to be expected as an artist? Your label encourages you to give CDs away, or tour at a loss, and sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn't? Isn't this the same idea? It sounds to me like a worthwhile risk. How many people were going to buy your debut album or come see a show and choose not to because they used their iTunes streaming account? Versus how many people easily stream (and pay for) you music 3 months later because they got hooked on iTunes streaming?

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#268

Post by IBM »

themartorana wrote: post #254
IBM wrote: post #230

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…

"Higher payouts" appear to be 71 (US) and 73% (rest of the world) vs. 70% from Spotify [0] (and likely very similar from other streaming services). 1% is a hilariously small amount to push expectations on artists without even asking. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jun/18/beggars-group-s...

And a 3 month free trial is a hilariously short period of time they won't be getting paid in the grand scheme of things. Aside from our characterizations of what is "hilariously small", the fact is that the major labels saw that the deal was worth it to them. And if any of these complaining labels were put to the test as to which deal they would prefer, (paid during free trial and industry standard rates or no payment during free trial and higher than industry rates) I'm pretty sure they're going to pick the latter.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#269

Post by w4 »

sehugg wrote: post #258
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…

I, personally, would ditch iOS development for Android in a heartbeat if that happened. But what if you had just ditched Android (i.e. Spotify) last year after publicly complaining about its usurious terms?

Then it's back to the web (or album sales and touring in Swift's case).

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#270

Post by sangnoir »

unfamiliar wrote: post #27

I agree with everything she said... but she didn't answer the question she posed at the start: why is she withholding 1989, (and not any of her other albums), and what does that have to do with the 3 month trial? If she disagrees with the free trial don't put any of your music up for that time span.

> If she disagrees with the free trial don't put any of your music up for that time span

Because Apple will not allow her to do so. It is not 3 universal calendar month: every user gets 3 months free when they start a subscription, depending on when they sign up for the service. Artist cannot opt-out of the free-service tier catalog and just go with the paid users.

So Taylor Swift is withholding her music because she won't get paid for all the listens by users in their first 3 months.

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