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To Apple, Love Taylor

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Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#491

Post by byuu »

WalterBright wrote: post #485
jfoster wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also had some quite significant costs involved in making you realise that their software existed, though.

Marketing and promotion is just as costly, if not more costly, than it ever was. I know too many wonderful open source projects that failed and left their author bitter because they thought that merely creating a great program was good enough. The "build it and they will come" is a stupid Hollywood fantasy. Even the Beatles went nowhere until they hooked up with promoter George Martin.

> The "build it and they will come" is a stupid Hollywood fantasy.

So incredibly true.

And even whenever I do try and talk about my software, people usually perceive it as an attack on competing software (you can't say why someone should use your product without implicitly stating why they shouldn't use someone else's); or as shameless self-promotion and advertising (even though it's all FOSS) =(

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#492

Post by byuu »

belorn wrote: post #431
byuu wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> increasingly difficult to sustain yourself solely as an artist. The number of ways to sustain yourself has significant increased in recent times, and some of those don't even use copyright as a mean for revenue. They are by nature immune to piracy. Taken Patreon and kickstarter. You can not pirate art which has not been created. An artist can decide how much wages they demand rather than find an other job, which in…

For Patreon and Kickstarter to work, you have to be really lucky, or really popular already. It's not just enough to have a great idea. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of striking it rich on an App Store app: more luck than talent. For every successful fundraising campaign, there are thousands that go nowhere. But obviously we don't hear about the failures.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#493

Post by [deleted] »

zxcvcxz wrote: post #488

Apple should keep the free trial, but pay revenue only to artists who aren't multi-millionaires or extremely popular. Then when Taylor still refuses to let iTunes sell her music she'll be seen for what she really is.

[deleted]

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#494

Post by simplexion »

zxcvcxz wrote: post #488

Apple should keep the free trial, but pay revenue only to artists who aren't multi-millionaires or extremely popular. Then when Taylor still refuses to let iTunes sell her music she'll be seen for what she really is.

It seems people dislike the truth of your comment.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#495

Post by peteretep »

busterarm wrote: post #450
kstrauser wrote: post #391

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…

Exposure isn't necessarily good for an app. Users frequently _cost_ money. Ask anyone who has significantly scaled freemium services. Exposure to lots of users who might not use your service can kill your business. If your service is really that good or serves a real need, you would recognize these potential users and market to them _aggressively_. You would even raise significant capital to do so if you did not have…

    > Exposure isn't necessarily good for an app. Users 
    > frequently _cost_ money. Ask anyone who has
    > significantly scaled freemium services.
Then it's not a business, it's a charity.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#496

Post by smil »

Apple should just pay royalties out of their own, enormous pockets of $172B (our whatever it was) for the first three months, just not charge users. Then there wouldn't be a problem. What they're doing now is just strong-arming weaker parties to create a platform that will increase their own power even more.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#497

Post by peteretep »

sanswork wrote: post #20

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.

    > just not paying the content producers
I suspect the record labels, with whom the deal was cut, would see themselves as the music producers, in more than just the pedantic sense of the word.

Someone somewhere invested an absolute shit-ton of cash in getting Ms Swift famous, producing her records, promoting her concerts, payola, etc, with absolutely no promise of return.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#498

Post by busterarm »

peteretep wrote: post #495
busterarm wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exposure isn't necessarily good for an app. Users frequently _cost_ money. Ask anyone who has significantly scaled freemium services. Exposure to lots of users who might not use your service can kill your business. If your service is really that good or serves a real need, you would recognize these potential users and market to them _aggressively_. You would even raise significant capital to do so if you did not have…

> Exposure isn't necessarily good for an app. Users > frequently _cost_ money. Ask anyone who has > significantly scaled freemium services. Then it's not a business, it's a charity.

Not necessarily. Cost of users isn't linear with count of users and while it might go down as your userbase grows, you might not have the finances yet to handle that growth.

You can't just "be ready to host a 100 million users, tomorrow" in the early stages of your business.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#499

Post by gridspy »

peteretep wrote: post #495
busterarm wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exposure isn't necessarily good for an app. Users frequently _cost_ money. Ask anyone who has significantly scaled freemium services. Exposure to lots of users who might not use your service can kill your business. If your service is really that good or serves a real need, you would recognize these potential users and market to them _aggressively_. You would even raise significant capital to do so if you did not have…

> Exposure isn't necessarily good for an app. Users > frequently _cost_ money. Ask anyone who has > significantly scaled freemium services. Then it's not a business, it's a charity.

It's a marketing channel. You pay real costs to provision and support free users so that some of them will become paid users.

It only works if there is a high enough proportion of conversions to paid.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#500

Post by chjohasbrouck »

japhyr wrote: post #109

I like how she states her position so concisely in the last two lines: We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.

I found it a little off-putting, because Apple does provide free iPhones to celebrities. They're included in gift bags and freebie tents at most of the events they attend, or often just mailed to them directly free of charge, or sent with a check in exchange for a tweet, etc.

Taylor Swift has probably personally received more than a dozen free iPhones. Even lesser-known celebrities receive multiple copies of all the latest electronics, and just regift them because they have so many.

When she wanted to upgrade to the 6, she most likely did not go to the store and pay for it.

Celebrities that big just receive free stuff shipped to their front door all the time. TVs, electronics, clothes, jewelry, luxury brands.

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