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“AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming during customer’s free trial period”

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Re: “AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming during customer’s free trial period”

#131

The extraordinarily cynical side of me wonders if this is all just a massive co-branding PR exercise to dominate the news cycle with "Taylor Swift", "Apple", "Free Music", "Apple Music." Highly unlikely because it's not the type of underhanded marketing that Apple engages in, but man - All I've been reading about, seeing in my twitter feed, is talk about the 90 Day free Music Trial with Apple coming up. This has been…

I don't think Apple came out of this looking very good, even after they capitulated.

Re: “AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming during customer’s free trial period”

#132
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure the new trial rates will be broadly similar to Spotify's per-stream rates, which average[1] between $0.006 and $0.0084. Apple Music has no advertising; you can't pay a percentage of revenue that doesn't exist. 1. http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/

They're licensing the music. Whether they make any revenue or not doesn't matter. You can't hand out other people's stuff for free and then refuse to pay anything because you didn't make any money from it. And I'm saying that as someone who thinks the current copyright system is incredibly broken.

You can if that is the terms by which you licensed the music.

Re: “AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming during customer’s free trial period”

#133
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to understand why you think it's bad that Taylor Swift tries to maximize her own revenue, but it's fine that Apple does the same, using her likeness and music to do so.

This is the question all of the detractors need to ask themselves. Honestly, when I first heard of the story (word of mouth) I immediately thought she was not understanding how it really worked. I had flashbacks to Metallica resisting streaming because they just didn't understand it. I thought there was no way Apple _actually_ wouldn't pay artists during those three months, so I dismissed it. Then I realized she was…

"All detractors"? Evidently I'm the only one :)

Re: “AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming during customer’s free trial period”

#134
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. But the trial could be significantly lower. They're not saying. It's worth nothing that by "higher rates" we are talking about a hundredth of a cent per stream.

Yep. And it appears that the Artists, like the music industry, really don't get that things have changed. Hey, I'm old school. I can identify with them. I like to buy my music. I don't get subscriptions where if I stop playing I can't listen to anything.... but I find myself listening to podcasts-- 2 hour long podcast of EDM. My favorite one has several YEARS of podcasts and despite skipping months at a time I'm stil…

Apple isn't progressive by having the artist paying the costs of Apple's trial offer. That is flat out dishonest if not theft.

The costs of trial offers are to be born by the company attempting to obtain subscribers or long term service. You don't have other people bear that cost for you, let alone product you have no legal right to profit off of.

I know, its a trial, how can their be profit. The profit is in the idea they will get a subscriber from the trial which is where the risk comes from. Apple should be taking the risk getting subscribers, not artist Apple chooses to play during the trial

Re: “AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming during customer’s free trial period”

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not handing out music for free. They incur costs, such as IT costs, marketing costs, plus the costs of having amassed hundred of millions of users. You could just as easily turn your argument around: the musicians incur zero costs for putting their music on Apple Music.

So did record stores. They had rent, signage, advertising, staff salaries and electricity bills to pay. You can't say because we have costs to sell your music, that we should be able to take those costs and pass them to the music artist and consider that payment for their product.

Except they aren't passing any costs to artists. There is exactly zero marginal cost for artists. Artists make their music available for free for a mere three months in exchange for Apple making a massive investment in the service. Keep in mind that 99.9% of artists don't even make any real money from streaming royalties anyway, especially during such a small window! And if customers like the service, they'll pay and presumably be members, as part of the world's most powerful ecosystem, with higher royalty rates than other services, backed by a deep-pocketed company that will promote the living hell out of it. How is this a bad thing??

Re: “AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming during customer’s free trial period”

#136
post #109
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're licensing the music. Whether they make any revenue or not doesn't matter. You can't hand out other people's stuff for free and then refuse to pay anything because you didn't make any money from it. And I'm saying that as someone who thinks the current copyright system is incredibly broken.

Likewise an artist can choose not to have their music on the service.

Unless the contract with their label says otherwise.

Re: “AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming during customer’s free trial period”

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the question all of the detractors need to ask themselves. Honestly, when I first heard of the story (word of mouth) I immediately thought she was not understanding how it really worked. I had flashbacks to Metallica resisting streaming because they just didn't understand it. I thought there was no way Apple _actually_ wouldn't pay artists during those three months, so I dismissed it. Then I realized she was…

"All detractors"? Evidently I'm the only one :)

Heh, I was sort of wrapping all of the negative comments I've seen (HN and otherwise) into a singular reply.

Re: “AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming during customer’s free trial period”

#138
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to understand why you think it's bad that Taylor Swift tries to maximize her own revenue, but it's fine that Apple does the same, using her likeness and music to do so.

I'm fine with Taylor Swift maximizing her own revenue...if she was simply honest about it. She is demonstrably not. She decided to turn it into a moral crusade and in her own words, "This is not about me." I am so turned off by it. Do you really think it's a coincidence that the only artist to write a big open letter to Apple about this was the one who stood to profit the most from it?????

Oh I agree with you there, if Taylor herself is solely responsible for this note. The weird thing is, although we use "she" to describe Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift is a coordinated business. This memo is really just a correspondence between two large businesses.

Could be a bit of a stretch, and this note wouldn't be made public if she didn't sign off on it, but I think this is more measured than an artist just pushing for revenue.

Re: “AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming during customer’s free trial period”

#139
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine with Taylor Swift maximizing her own revenue...if she was simply honest about it. She is demonstrably not. She decided to turn it into a moral crusade and in her own words, "This is not about me." I am so turned off by it. Do you really think it's a coincidence that the only artist to write a big open letter to Apple about this was the one who stood to profit the most from it?????

Oh I agree with you there, if Taylor herself is solely responsible for this note. The weird thing is, although we use "she" to describe Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift is a coordinated business. This memo is really just a correspondence between two large businesses. Could be a bit of a stretch, and this note wouldn't be made public if she didn't sign off on it, but I think this is more measured than an artist just pushing…

I honestly think Taylor Swift wrote this entire letter herself. She famously takes pride in writing her own music and going out of her way to say things that go beyond promoting herself. (Fwiw I kinda like her album) But she's wrong here, and I intensely dislike how she's manipulating the situation by reducing it to, "Apple has a lot of money and smaller artists don't." It's actually wildly business-savvy on her part.

When she previously removed her album from Spotify she implicitly let it be known what her motivations were: maximizing her own revenue, even if it was at the expense of other musicians. End of story. She would rather you give your $12 entirely to her instead of Spotify (or another album), which spreads it around. And I'm totally fine with that decision since she might seriously be the only musician alive with enough juice to get away with it. But the point remains that she's already made her motives perfectly clear, so when she wrote that letter to Apple it was purely about making sure she got paid during that three month trial. Of course, other artists will get to ride her coat-tails some, so she played up that angle and pretended it was a moral crusade. If she tells Apple, "Tell you what, take the money you'd pay me during those three months and distribute it evenly to everyone else." then I'd applaud her. Until then, she's a hypocrite going after more money.

Re: “AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming during customer’s free trial period”

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much every other streaming service, except spotify, has the album available. No exclusive here.

Like which? Rdio doesn't have 1989, for instance. http://www.rdio.com/artist/Taylor_Swift/albums/

Yes, that is true. Only the singles are available to stream. However, there's no guarantee that she's gonna release it in AppleMusic, she may only release older albums, like she does in Rdio and like other bands did in Spotify (specially Coldplay).
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