Related discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9756009.
Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians During Free Trial
141–150 of 152 posts
Re: Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians During Free Trial
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, 1.5% extra for a 3 month trial with no royalties was utterly contemptual and only appealing to those who couldn't do math: 100/1.5 = 66.67 x 3 months = 200 months to recoup the lost royalties. For a music streaming service, looking to recoup your lost royalties after almost 17 YEARS (and only getting 1.5% extra at that) is laughable.
It looks to me like this reasoning is laughable. It looks like the same reasoning as when the major are counting every single pirated song as a "missing sale". Like if it would have translated in a sale otherwise... The three months free period is intended to make the amount of paid customer bigger after the three months, so you have to account for that (and you don't). I don't know what is the predicted impact of th…
So you do make a valid point, but I think your estimation of the impact is vastly overrated, too.
Number of users who will pay for Apple Music with no trial or a 1 month trial (as per Spotify, Rdio, et al) = x,
Number of users who would not pay for Apple Music with no trial but will after a 3 month free trial = 2x?
Doubtful. I think the order of magnitude in people for whom the three month trial is in the order of single digit percentages, at most (because I'm sure other music services have A/B tested this). "1 month vs 3 month trial" is not revolutionary nor out of left field, and I can guarantee if the there was a 100% increase in customer base by Spotify offering a three month trial, they would be doing that right now.
Re: Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians During Free Trial
#143Is Apple paying the artists, or the record labels? And if the latter, how much money would actually end up in the artists pockets?
Presumably it's paying the rights-holders, whoever they happen to be (i.e. usually labels). How would you expect it to work?
The way you described, but the articles keep referring to the artists and sadly once the labels take their cut there really wouldn't be much left of the artists.
Re: Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians During Free Trial
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt they tried to plan the whole thing, too much negativity risk involved.
And Swift just happen to complain and withdraw her songs from Spotify, the main company Apple Music is competing against. Regarding negativity risk. What risk? If you assume they planned this all along then how possibly this could be negative. The only risk they had if they would end up ignoring her. This was a great PR stunt to make Apple look much better than a competitor and I'm afraid Swift was nothing more than…
Taylor Swift doesn't have 1989 on any streaming platforms. She also pulled all her music from Spotify because the free tier doesn't pay anything. She has a quite long history at this point of fighting against these streaming services that underpay artists, and encouraging her fans to actually buy her albums.
Why would she be so intent on getting involved with Apple's streaming service?
Re: Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians During Free Trial
#145this was a BRILLIANT pr orchestration. blogs, articles, etc all over the globe were written about apple music, for free. would have been far more expensive to buy all that airtime than this little scandal. so taylor swift gets more publicity, apple music is now an established brand name, everyone and their dog knows about their pricing model - holy shit. hats off to the apple team, playing the outrage-piano like no o…
This. It's highly unlikely that some SVP would respond so swiftly (no pun intended) to a pop star.
That pop star has 59.3M Twitter followers.
Re: Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians During Free Trial
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not really on point tho is it? TS has put out way more than a standard recording contract. So she'd be like a first round draft pick who is now a free agent with a couple of super bowl mvp's. Its not like anbody cares that peyton and eli manning had their famous dad as there high school coach during contract negotiations. On the merits, she gets alot of credits because she writes alot of her material as well.…
Right, and the fact that she had the leverage to be able to do that in the first place makes her unlike the vast majority of artists on these services. So for her to play the "I'm not doing this for me, I'm doing this for all the undiscovered artists" card is a bit disingenuous. That's not how the industry works for the majority of artists -- their payouts from Spotify/Apple Music/etc. are so low they aren't focused…
To be fair, look at what people like Adele and the british independent labels were saying last week before she chimed in.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9756009
TS simply agreed with a previously articulated view. She didn't invent the argument.
(edit: They already pulled adele from the contract talks from what I gather, presumably because XL is indeed one of those small labels that breaks original talent, but doesn't have the superstar/financial status of the majors to just eat a full quarter of earnings/working capital. And given how spiky a hit based industry is it might be even worse if one of these companies had to launch a once in a lieftime hit record in this window, etc).
Re: Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians During Free Trial
#147I don't understand why everybody is reporting this as "Taylor Swift". Shouldn't it be "Taylor Swift's Management" or "Taylor Swift's Lawyers". She obviously didn't plan this.
The letter was written in the first person, on her Tumblr blog.
Re: Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians During Free Trial
#148Is Apple's royalty structure set up so that if I pay $10/month and I listen to just Justin Bieber, then Justin Bieber gets the royalties from that $10, or is my 1,000 Justin Bieber plays added onto the plays of everyone else and royalties averaged out evenly? If it's the latter, this change doesn't impact Apple economically, it just adjusts the payouts percentages.
Here's the contract: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2015/06/17/fk-it-h...
Subscription service stuff is at the end.
I assume they will be changing this section: "Fees for Trials and Comp Accounts. For the sake of clarity, for Trial Users, and for Comp Accounts that ITUNES provides on a gratis basis, no license or royalty fees, including Fees, will be due to COMPANY."
Re: Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians During Free Trial
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you've missed the point a bit. The third (pretty likely) scenario that you don't mention is that they planned the whole exchange.
I'm reminded of the huge success Coke experienced after reintroducing Coca Cola Classic after the disastrous new Coke. When questioned about the whole thing Coke's president Donald Keough said, "Some critics will say Coca-Cola made a marketing mistake. Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is we are not that dumb, and we are not that smart."
I'm not sure what that's actually saying. So they didn't make a mistake?
Re: Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians During Free Trial
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying we should have app developers and content producers with a Taylor Swift-like popular status?
Are you saying we shouldn't?
Not at all. It's an interesting thought. I doubt it's possible to that extent, though. There certainly are some superstar programmers, but they have nowhere near the reach in mainstream culture as someone like Taylor Swift has.