Live data from Hacker News

To Apple, Love Taylor

taylorswift.tumblr.com

411–420 of 534 posts

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#411

3 months free to buy market share makes sense but I am amazed to hear that they are doing it by just not paying the content producers during those 3 months. I'd be doing the same thing in her place. Apple has the cash to run a loss leader on this.

The other rationale I've heard is that if Apple paid for it out-of-pocket it could be considered anticompetitive for using predatory pricing.

This circumstance, in which Apple essentially pre-installs the service on every device and subsequently offers it for free, isn't so different from 1990s Microsoft bundling IE with Windows to undercut Netscape.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#412
Is software free trial similar to this? Don't we, as developers, give our software for free in either a freemium or free trial business models? One freemium tool I'm involved in only monetizes 2-3% of our users... But it's a model that works as far as marketing goes.. Not saying you shouldn't pay artists but isn't this another form of marketing to users? In the end, it's win-win. Apple gets more users, artists gets more listens...

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#413
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.

This is kind of the problem though. You might, but most iOS developers would take the lumps and continue on as normal. iOS is too lucrative a market to ditch on philosophical grounds. After all, if Apple did adopt this policy, it's not even clear that it would be their worst offense regarding the iOS app ecosystem.

And that's the lesson Apple learned from iOS. They're just applying it now to their music store.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#414
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I appreciate you responding to my criticism. The first part - there is definitely an association between believing A and believing B, but I don't think it's fair to assume B when they only talked about A.

As for what I called demagoguery: I mean, corporations are considered legal persons in most countries - that's where the word corporation comes from - which is what allows them to own property, enter into contracts, etc., as well as to violate the law. So then the US has been more uniquely inclined to allow corporations to claim rights originally intended for natural persons (such as free speech, contract rights, property rights, rights of the accused); and there is valid criticism of that idea for various reasons, the most obvious one being that they're very different from actual people, so Congress should have to explicitly decide what privileges corporations should have rather than the judicial system tacking on existing ones. But on the other hand, it's not completely ridiculous to say that since corporations and people have similar sets of abilities in the eyes of the law, the same principles should apply, especially with respect to commerce.

Even in the case of corporate free speech, there are certainly situations where governmental restrictions on a corporation's speech would feel fundamentally wrong - e.g. suppose Congress decided political activism groups, from the EFF to the NRA, were only allowed to use corporate funds to spread their message at all if Congress liked them. Citizens United, as I said, approached this in terms of freedom of association more than corporate personhood, but neither does it seem immediately absurd to try to solve it the latter way. (Incidentally, the need to find, and the partial arbitrariness of, a dividing line between that example on one hand which should have constitutional protection, and super PACs on the other which should not, is why "corporations aren't people" is a bit simplistic as an approach to solving the Citizens United problem. You really don't want to remove protection from the former.)

Anyway, it seems self-evident that corporations and individuals need at least somewhat separate treatment by tax law (e.g. because of the double taxation issue when corporations pay out earnings to shareholders). Given that corporate personhood in general is not fundamentally and irrevocably an evil or unfair idea, merely specific implementations of it, it's not fair to be reductive and say that the person analogy must be taken to absurd extremes.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#415
post #292

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…

How do you measure time spent "in-app"? Does the app have to be in the foreground or merely running in the background? If it has to be in the foreground then how does that help apps that mainly run in the background such as RunKeeper? If it's allowed to run in the background and still get credit then won't that create an incentive for battery-draining crap that users struggle to shut down?

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#416

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 think in some ways, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders to use reasonable means to maximize the value of your company. It seems to me that includes both operational efficiency and prudent use of available tax breaks. I'm uncomfortable with the line of reasoning that we "can't do anything until we change the system," but I do wonder how Wall Street would react to a company that decided for moral…

Except you actually don't and this has been a myth that has continued to plague any type of discussions like this.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#417
I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been antitrust action over this. Apple are trying to leverage one monopoly (iTunes Music Store for digital music sales) to gain a monopoly in another market (music streaming) by forcing unreasonable terms.

I guess this is also a reflection of the lack of political will for antitrust action. In my view, Apple has long been on thin ground with regards tying but there seems to be a lack of political will to use competition law.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#418
post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd encourage you to consider the hypothetical I posted in the last thread about Apple Music's 3 month trial. To make the analogy a little more accurate: > Tomorrow, Apple announces that it will be introducing an "App Store Subscription." For $9.99/month users will be allowed to use one App Store app at a time. When an app is running, it will present a button allowing a user to purchase that app so that they may us…

Unless you happen to be this Summer's big record... in which case your one profitable window for your track will have has just been obliterated.

Lets say you are that artist. You have practiced, trained, studied. You have worked hard and have a rare natural talent. You sang the songs and played guitar. Now you have "this summer's big record". Two million children want to listen to your song (without paying any additional costs) 50-100 times over the next 3 months, and then never again.

How much is that worth to society? How much money should you make from that?

Consider an elementary teacher tasked with teaching 28 children to read and guiding them to becoming active participants in democracy rather than repeat offenders. $50k/yr. Compare a state university computer science professor who will teach dozens of new jacks this year how to measure and optimize algorithms-- setting them up for a life of full time employment while all their friends tread in the sea of shit and unemployment around them. $90k/yr. Consider a bus driver, a construction worker, a civil engineer, anyone who didnt have a chance to finish high school or College and still goes to work every day. Or those who went to ivy league colleges and resisted the urge to go into finance. Productive people.

We are all productive and we all add value, and we are underpaid. Our kids will have varying access to good education. We have less access to inferior healthcare. We spend too much time at work and not enough time with our kids. The lowest of us live in poverty and violence, relegated to feeding our children less healthy, life shortening diets. And thats just in the U.S., one of the wealthiest states on the planet.

Now how much is that song you sang worth?

Artists should be about art. If you dont like the fact that Apple wants you to be their slave, then distribute your music yourself. If people dont want to pay for your music, then keep doing what you want to do and starve or start doing what they want you to do and make money. But dont try to be about the art and say the faceless evil corporation should pay you more. It is disrespectful to the productive workers of the world.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#419
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am all in her camp on this one. Most services eat the cost of trial periods in hopes of snaring subscribers and making up the loss. Apple is being dishonest by claiming free trial while passing off the costs to the artists by relying on Apple's name and status so as not to have people question it. In other words, they are spinning the story faster that old 78s

By your logic, Apple should pay for the music and give it away free since they are the ones who will benefit. But that means that if revenues rise as a result of the new service, Apple should keep all the extra profit rather than sharing it with the artists. Is that what you really want?

Apple wants to give it away for free, not the artists. Apple needs the artists, hence they need to pay.

Revenue rising with the new service will eat into the other revenue streams from sales. Subscription revenue has already been proven to be laughable with Spotify.

Saying that Apple gets to keep all the extra profit because they paid the artists during arbitrary terms set by Apple is incredibly short sighted, as the profit you speak of means profit to Apple, but a loss to the music industry.

Post reply on HN