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

341–350 of 534 posts

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#341

Post by Executor »

biggy3100 wrote: post #316
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…

Culture has shifted and now piracy is not looked at as a real crime, but a passage of rite. These streaming services came around as an alternative to piracy and not paying anything for content anywhere. We're witness the bankrupting of artists over time. And it amazes me that on a forum of content creators, you can see the self-interested individuals rationalizing it as fair. We can argue about the business models al…

Here is a better model of paying artists:

- If artist sells music on a DRM-free downloading service like bandcamp.com, support them

- Otherwise let them starve

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#342

Post by mikehearn »

blankenship wrote: post #295
mikehearn wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To me there are, but I'm open to discussion.

- Different pricing. Apps can be anywhere from $1 to $500, while songs typically hover around $0.99. The wide variance in app pricing makes a subscription model challenging to satisfy all users and developers.

- Different markets. When you make an app, you're tying it to be used on a specific platform. It is additional work to make it cross-platform. That alone is limiting for an apps' market, and in the case of iOS, the platform's owner can impose additional limits. Music is open-ish in the sense that you can make music once and release it in a way that it's playable, essentially, everywhere.

- Different revenue streams. Music is a digital good like apps, but it's also a physical good (CDs, records) and most importantly it's a service (live performances). It's possible to have additional revenue streams with apps, but it's not as common as it is with music. If Apple spontaneously created an app subscription model and your app was iOS only, you would suddenly be very locked into that business model, whereas with music you will always have additional options.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#343

Post by w4 »

byuu wrote: post #334
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'm not making any statement on whether it's good or bad, right or wrong, but ... Software developers aren't immune to piracy's effects, either. Whether we like it or not, we're quickly shifting into a world where art is only viable as a labor of love. Everything being digital means copying is free. Scarcity has gone out the window. Now if only our increased productivity and automations led to lesser and lesser worki…

> Software developers aren't immune to piracy's effects, either. Whether we like it or not, we're quickly shifting into a world where art is only viable as a labor of love. Everything being digital means copying is free.

Isn't this one of the big reasons for the rise of SaaS apps, though? Developers, unlike musicians, have found a way to combat piracy in a way that both consumers seem to prefer (lower upfront costs and usage based pricing) and developers benefit from (more revenue over time in exchange for delivering real value).

Besides, being forced to provide 3 months of free usage without any say in the matter is hardly defensible due to piracy. It's even less defensible when the party enforcing the free usage is the party that stands to benefit most from it.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#344

Post by merb »

Why so many people blame apple? For the beloved Tayloer? Or for the beloved Music industry?

I still don't get it. Today's music pretty much sucks, I mean the artists mostly didn't even make their own music, they just buy the text and everything. Most music of today costs way less than it costed years before and still isn't that great, it's just for the masses and yet artists are crying cause they get not enough? Huh 10 $ per month is a lot especially when you think about it, a normal person won't buy an album every month which costs nearly 10 $ per month.. Also why should an artist live with a single hit for his whole life? That makes no sense.

People in this business don't live in the reality, I mean more and more films happen to be on streaming platforms, yet a film costs way more to produce than music and still you pay the same price for netflix / amazon instant video / etc than for a music streaming service.

Also why does an album online costs as much as an album inside the store?? Thats way out of reality.

People should stop buying everything from labels, artists, just to show them what they do today is not funny anymore.

P.S.: And i don't get it why she has so many fans. Hell her music is way worse than a lot of pop music I listened so far. Why can't we have great artists today? Nobody remembers the good old days of The Who, Queen, Redbone, Blue Swede, etc.. Too bad what happens to music these days..

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#346

Post by w4 »

gress wrote: post #339
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…

Can you explain why that wouldn't be a great deal for app developers? I develop iOS apps, and I'd love it if apple moved to a pay for use model. I care about a world where the most useful apps are rewarded.

> Can you explain why that wouldn't be a great deal for app developers? I develop iOS apps, and I'd love it if apple moved to a pay for use model.

While it may be the case that pay-per-use would be a great model for developers (though I'm highly dubious that this is the case for anyone that isn't making a trivial $0.99 app), that isn't the main thrust of my hypothetical.

The problem with this scenario is the loss of a full quarter of revenue from every new App Store user in the interest of Apple acquiring subscribers. Do you think it would be a great deal for app developers to not be paid for three months of every single App Store user's usage?

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#347

Post by yequalsx »

comex wrote: post #206
yequalsx wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice usage of the word 'confiscatory'. My experience with people who use this word in relation to taxation is that they use it in derogatory sense and is used primarily by conservatives and libertarians. I don't know if that is the case for you. What do you consider the optimal corporate tax rate? You said 10% is high enough. Do you think it should be 0%? If you are in the libertarian and/or conservative branch of U.…

There is no sense setting up a strawman about a topic, exceptionalism, which the parent did not even raise or mention. Blaming Citizens United (certainly a harmful decision) on corporate personhood is, while popular, unduly reductive; the actual ruling was more about freedom of association. Even in the context of the debate about corporate personhood, your rhetorical question about tax rate is pure demagogy.

Have you ever heard of someone refer to taxes as confiscatory and it be the case that that person is not a conservative or a libertarian who holds the beliefs mention in my post? I haven't but I did acknowledge that perhaps those beliefs were not shared by the person I responded to. Thus the questions I asked. It was not demagoguery. The argument was quite rational.

People who refer to taxes as confiscatory rather than as being too high are attempting to frame the topic of taxation as it being, necessarily, wrong. It's a ridiculous starting point. These same people almost always scoff at arguments that the U.S. ought to adopt some social policies because all other industrialized nations have them. It is, with this fact in mind, quite rational to ask why looking at the corporate tax rate of other countries is a good argument.

Why is it demagoguery to ask why a person in the form of a corporation should pay less in taxes than a person in the form of a human?

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#348

Post by w4 »

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.

You're missing the main thrust of the hypothetical (arguments about how "amazing" the offer is aside):

> Apple simultaneously announces a 3 month free trial for all App Store accounts, and states that it will be making no payments to developers during that trial since users are not paying for it.

That's a terrible offer no matter how you cut it.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#349

Post by vonklaus »

No one seems to have said this yet, but I wonder if Apple has done the following math:

expected negative value of bad pr = NPR

loss of customers from artists pulling songs = CUS

Cost of running PR Campaigns combating these stories = PR

Cost of paying artists for 3 month trial = TRIAL

Other forgotten costs = COSTS

If(NPR + CUS + PR) is greater than (TRIAL + COSTS) they should just pay the artists and make this go away. Obviously this is a very simplified example, but I wonder if Apple has done this sort of appraisal. I suspect they have.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#350

Post by themartorana »

zxcvcxz wrote: post #286
themartorana wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're being deceptive, Fargren is on point. Once the dev leaves the company they no longer make that salary. Artists typically get paid some kind of royalty and don't give up full ownership of their work. >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 Good riddance.

You're being deceptive

That's not very nice.

Who do you think owns SaaS businesses, or App Store apps, or downloadable software, etc.? I own a software company. If I couldn't resell my software over and over, I'd be homeless. If it couldn't sell software over and over, I'd have to fire all my employees (dev, customer support, marketing...) and shutter my business.

Do you think artists don't have employees? Is their music not their business? There's no difference between me owning software or an artist owning music.

Also, the companies you're saying "good riddance" to defined the world of selling software as a business and as a profession. You may think we'd be fine without them now, but not acknowledging the role they played is disingenuous at best - not to mention the literally hundreds of thousands of jobs they've created directly or indirectly.

Post reply on HN