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To Apple, Love Taylor

taylorswift.tumblr.com

101–110 of 534 posts

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#101

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.

There may be pre-existing contractual obligations that make it harder to pull the back catalogue.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#102
post #80

> Three months is a long time to go unpaid, and it is unfair to ask anyone to work for nothing. It is safe to assume that max. 10% of the subscribers will be in this 3 month trial. You will make money from the other 90%. Also, just a little industry insight: Taylor makes $1.5m+ at each concert, plus travel, hotel, technical rider. I have a very hard time understanding all this cry baby talk.

> This is about the new artist or band that has just released their first single and will not be paid for its success. Did you read the whole article?

Yes. That point simply is not valid. As i said, that new artist will be losing 10% at max.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#103
post #47
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's also a multi-millionare. I doubt she has time for this and it's managed by her company, pr, and/or lawyers.

By that logic, Jobs didn't write http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ or his "thoughts on music" (which seem to have disappeared from Apple.com), either.

There was a time when people used to calculate how much money would have to be lying on the ground for it to be worth Bill Gates' time to simply stop, lean down, and pick it up...

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#104
post #80

> Three months is a long time to go unpaid, and it is unfair to ask anyone to work for nothing. It is safe to assume that max. 10% of the subscribers will be in this 3 month trial. You will make money from the other 90%. Also, just a little industry insight: Taylor makes $1.5m+ at each concert, plus travel, hotel, technical rider. I have a very hard time understanding all this cry baby talk.

So, because she's successful, she should roll over and forgo one of her income steams? If she truly believes this Apple deal will hurt her bottom line, or the bottom line of other content creators, she has a legitimate complaint.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#105

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's big problem is that the service itself offers nothing new.

Eh. Apple Music is mediocre and that's ok.

It's instantly going to be the default music player on hundreds of millions of iPhones overnight. At worst, they're going to get the same usage as Spotify.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#106

Lots of record labels (mostly independents) are definitely unhappy with this as well. The biggest one to speak out is beggars group[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9738304

I'll suggest this is all a fairly straightforward negotiation ploy.

Apple's deal obviously makes sense for the artist otherwise the major labels would not have signed up, full stop.

What then are these independent's doing? I'd suggest since there is no money at stake in the first 3 months they are holding out to pressure for slightly better terms (and a couple headlines never hurt sales) and then will jump on in 3 months once the money is actually flowing.

You'll note that there will always be many people in the 3 month free trial, Swift isn't threatening to hold her album out forever (or her other music!) to stop the supposed bad business model, just for the 3 launch months when guaranteed revenue zero.

Kudos to these artists for knowing where their leverage is and using it though!

Apple has a couple options:

(1) just eat it, prolly what happens.

(2) they can pay up a bit but the big labels would be steamed at getting a worse deal than independents so that isn't happening.

(3) pay everyone a little bit more for the launch months. This might happen but the clock is ticking.

(4) they can make these artists sit out longer than the initial 3 months. That compromises the quality of their service though. Still they might do it, hoping it would pressure them to signing up for the release.

(5) they could weight the streaming for awhile so that holdout artists appear less than they might normally. I expect this might happen but if they do this hopefully be done openly ("we're rewarding our launch partners").

(6) go back in time and do a 3 month beta rollout so money is at stake when you do the big rollout with the new phone.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#107

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…

None of the streaming services (including existing services Rdio and Spotify) offer anything unique. In my opinion, the only thing the truly separates them is catalogue size.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#108
My thought is Apple can offer opt-in for artists who wish to get unpaid during the trial period. Some artists would want to get some exposures instead of cash.

For those who want to get paid from the start, their work will only be available to paying customers.

I don't see this is a major change to be made by Apple, and it is a win-win.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#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.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#110
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taylor did not write that... at least I don't think that she did.

You'd be surprised. I'm not a fan of her music (if I had kids they probably would be) but she's very hands-on with her image and if it's on her tumblr page, she wrote it. I respect her as a person and from what I've seen she's very intelligent and articulate.

I'm sure she wrote it, but I'm also sure not a word of it didn't get approved by her lawyers and PR people, and they probably had to do a hefty amount of editing to ensure the tone and words are just right (and don't harm any contracts they may have with apple.)

I mean I'm sure she's great, but she's also a brand and a business in her own right. Stuff like this is too important to let an artist just go off and say whatever she feels.

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