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To Apple, Love Taylor

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Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#291

Post by jws »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #190
jws wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand how music usually works… 30 years playing in and recording with independent bands. Dong just fine on understanding up front investments.

> 30 years playing in and recording with independent bands. Dong just fine on understanding up front investments. Apologies, then. Though I am curious about your take on this... specifically why it differs from my other friends. All of my independent musician friends I know online and off think this is a raw deal as soon as they learn the details. I understand why it makes sense for the big labels (they don't care ab…

I suspect mostly because I started making music in an age when duplicating a CD was not possible and MP3 hadn't happened. I view my music projects as producing something and then working to get it into customers' hands. Radio stations would play our music and not pay us any royalty (except the songwriter portion), and that was fine.

Enter MP3 and suddenly musicians are looking at a hostile world where their primary consuming demographic believes it is silly to pay for music at all. Bands have traditionally felt screwed by labels, now their customers are screwing them. Apple sets up a service where the labels contribution to the free trial period results in no revenue for bands and that's the distributor screwing them. That makes it pretty much the entire industry top to bottom.

I don't see it that way. Apple Music will likely tap a huge population that doesn't currently have a streaming service which is a great thing.

As far as "losing" micropayments from song plays during the trial… If someone is forced to listen to my song by their robot DJ and doesn't care enough to come see a concert or buy something, or listen to it in the future… that wasn't really a sale I missed out on. That was some poor schmuck that wasted 4 minutes of his listening time on my song and in some alternate economic system would have paid me for the privilege, but didn't.

Also: I'm eating in August no matter how this plays out.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#292

Post by clord »

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.

It might help prevent crap-tastic apps on the store because it changes the incentive structure. If the subscription is doled out in proportion to time spent in-app, the incentive on developers would be to maximize engagement time, which might be a good thing for users. For paid apps such a scheme would be a problem since it would likely reduce income, but as a way to get money to fund free apps, not a bad idea actually.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#293

Post by IBM »

dperfect wrote: post #247

As others point out, it doesn't make much sense for Apple to attempt this (not paying content producers during a 3-month trial) for the sake of money alone - they have the cash (even if subject to high taxes) to pay for a loss leader like this. If that's not the primary motivation, I can think of two alternatives: 1. Apple lacks confidence in rolling this out - they don't even know if they'd make back their money usi…

The case for the latter is extremely strong despite how you've framed it. Apple Music will overnight be on an install base of 700-800 million iOS devices plus Macs (and available on Android and on iTunes on Windows). That combined with the fact that Apple's customers have regularly shown they are willing to pay for apps/services/media makes it extremely likely that this service is going to rapidly expand the market for streaming customers in a short period of time. It's been reported that Apple's goal is a 100 million customers for Apple Music, that's 5 times the number of paid customers Spotify has.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#294

Post by RodericDay »

rsync wrote: post #126
nrp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the RIAA, the entire recorded music industry in the US recorded under $7 Billion in revenue in 2014. Apple has north of $20 Billion in cash in the US. There are likely many reasons for Apple to make the move they did, but it is unlikely cash on hand was one of them.

"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

This happens all the time in "Uber vs. big taxi medallion cartel" debates.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#295

Post by blankenship »

mikehearn wrote: post #287
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…

There are a lot of economic differences between music and apps (e.g. price range, labels negotiate on behalf of artists, music has dozens of outlets versus 2-3 for apps, etc), but my hope is you would still analyze the economics before ditching. If you ultimately would stand to make more money through subscriptions in the long term, despite losing three months of revenue, then it would make sense to stay, right?

There are a lot of economic differences between music and apps

Are there? (At least for independent musicians?) From my experience, it seems like a decent comparison—you can make an app or album for $2000 or $200k.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#296

Post by apricot »

donarb wrote: post #244
spinchange wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I use their OS or apps on anything I don't buy from them first? Apple doesn't "give away" anything for free.

Sure, go to eBay or Craigslist and buy a used Mac. Then go to apple.com and download their latest OS for free. Can't do that with a PC/Windows.

Windows updates (from 7 or 8 to 10) will be free, too, according to Microsoft.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#298

Post by glesica »

clord wrote: post #292
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.

It might help prevent crap-tastic apps on the store because it changes the incentive structure. If the subscription is doled out in proportion to time spent in-app, the incentive on developers would be to maximize engagement time, which might be a good thing for users. For paid apps such a scheme would be a problem since it would likely reduce income, but as a way to get money to fund free apps, not a bad idea actual…

> If the subscription is doled out in proportion to time spent in-app

And think of all the cool new laborious, overcomplicated, and time-consuming UI designs we could look forward to!

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#299

Post by sanswork »

sehugg wrote: post #284
sanswork wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a pretty successful model in some countries: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/kddi-smartpass/

It says it is limited to 500 apps so compared to 1.4m in the app store less people to spread the money around to. It also sounds like they removed the option of using the Android store from this quote "saying that consumers would get confused if there were two app stores — Google Play and a branded KDDI store". So there really isn't the option of their users going to a different system.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#300

Post by makeitsuckless »

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…

What makes musicians sound more greedy or unreasonable than most is the generally passive attitude towards the innovation necessary to sustain their own income.

They expect Apple, Spotify, Pandora etcetera to take all the risk (including the major risk of being unilaterally torpedoed by those same artists), do all the upfront investment and then whine about not getting a big enough piece of the cake.

Taylor Swift is being an outlier here in the respectful way in which she communicates. And she knows it, that's why she chooses her words very carefully.

Most of these artist just bitch and whine about their percentage, ignoring the fact that, with antiquated copyright laws firmly on the side of the music industry, technology firms are taking quite insane risk in their attempts to innovate the way music connects to the listeners.

If they hadn't, sales of music would have totally flatlined by now and those artist would be way worse off.

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