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To Apple, Love Taylor

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Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#271

Post by StringyBob »

imteamcoltra wrote: post #236
w4 wrote: 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…

It's hard because music you can actually track how many people are listening to what songs and how much of the song they listen to and compensate accordingly. If they were able to track how often a person used an app then I don't think that would be too bad except for extremely niche apps which are usually enterprise already. I would take a smaller payment if I got paid $0.01 for three minutes my app was open on a ph…

I don't think current subscription systems make the best use of this data. I personally believe that royalties should be calculated per individual paying user account rather than aggregated over total playbacks in the service.

In other words, If I only listen to 'my favorite niche band' in a month, but don't use the service much, it's unlikely that they will see anything near the full possible share of royalties from that months $10. The system instead is biased to musicians whose fans use the system most heavily on loop - ironically more likely to be taylor swift type pop megastars.

[edit - explained more clearly by http://lit.vulf.de/spotify-so-little/]

Anyone know how apple will compare on royalties after the 3 month period compared to spotify? I've been a spotify premium subscriber since 2009, but would move to a system that meets my definition of equitable.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#273

Post by kalleboo »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #95
jws wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole "pay nothing" idea is strange to see on HN. Apple developed the software, is footing the server, power, bandwidth, and ops bills for three months all for free. The labels are chipping in their content for three months. Sounds like everyone is bringing something to the table. Apple is incurring real costs. The labels, not so much. Three kinds of customers will try the service: People who buy their music: th…

I get the typical arguments that things being available free might not affect sales - but in this case I think they'll see a direct impact. I think they'll get a pretty large amount of trial users simply by advertising it in iTunes - oh you're about to buy this album? Why don't you listen to it and the majority of our catalog free for three months instead? Other than Android they have a lot of music use cases support…

> oh you're about to buy this album? Why don't you listen to it and the majority of our catalog free for three months instead

I think it was Eddy Cue who said specifically in an interview that they will not do this.

Edit: from the Guardian

He also denies a recent report that Apple is planning to aggressively promote its new streaming service to people buying albums on the iTunes Store. “That’s the wrong way to look at it. You shouldn’t take a customer who’s buying an album, who’s happy buying an album, and try to tell them that what they’re doing is wrong,” he says.

“But we don’t have to, and we shouldn’t try to kill the iTunes Store or kill people that are buying music. If you’re happy buying a few albums a year and that’s the way you’d like to continue doing it … but if we can help you discover some new artists or some new albums through Connect or through listening to Beats 1 radio, great.”

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#274

Post by k-mcgrady »

Steko wrote: post #106
yincrash wrote: post #32

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 mo…

>> 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?

It's very simple. The biggest portion of a records sales are going to come int he month or two after release, after the big marketing push. If an indie releases a record during those 3 months they are going to lose a ton of potential revenue. For a small record label that can be terminal. They're running on fumes they can't take the hit like the majors.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#275

Post by sangnoir »

Spooky23 wrote: post #132
kbrwn wrote: post #26

Can anyone at Apple (or perhaps formally at Apple) explain why this is the case? It seems like a raw deal that no sane musician would ever agree to. Imagine if when the first iPhone came out AT&T told Apple they were giving every customer a free trial with the device for 3 months before they pay for it Apple would have laughed and chose another carrier for its exclusive deal. I don't agree with the model of payment t…

It's pretty obvious. They are going to take streaming to a whole new level. My dad doesn't know what Spotify is, but has an iPhone and is a couple of clicks away from lighting this service up. You give away a couple of months, get people hooked and you and reap years of recurring revenues. It's a model that works for drug dealers, razor blade makers (Gilette gives away 5 packs of blades in many schools) and SaaS comp…

As someone else alluded to: drug suppliers still get paid for those free 'hits'. It's the distributor who swallows the cost in exchange for recurring revenue.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#276

Post by donarb »

aGuyNamedJonas wrote: post #140
Spooky23 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty obvious. They are going to take streaming to a whole new level. My dad doesn't know what Spotify is, but has an iPhone and is a couple of clicks away from lighting this service up. You give away a couple of months, get people hooked and you and reap years of recurring revenues. It's a model that works for drug dealers, razor blade makers (Gilette gives away 5 packs of blades in many schools) and SaaS comp…

Artists who's songs are played on the radio are paid for every time it's played on air. Or did I get your last sentence wrong there?

In the US, for radio performances, its only the person who wrote the song that gets paid. The artist who sang the song usually get nothing.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#277

Post by ojosilva »

My wife is a musician and we have this argument all the time. She's not a recording artist or anything, but she does complain of abuse in the deals her different bands and groups get at venues. And I say, that's supply-demand, that's the way business is done, how much is the venue getting out of the concert? How can you compete when there's so much people playing for free or on much lower cuts? What can you do if the end-customer prefer not to pay cover charges or see the value in live music? etc. etc. It's a music business after all.

So Taylor Swift's plead is pathetic, "Thankfully... I can support myself," deceiving "by playing shows" [1] and even condescending, "This is about the young songwriter who just got his or her first cut... who works tirelessly." Oh, come on!

You don't agree with the terms of the deal, so you pulled out. Fine. Now your fans who are going to try this new service won't have access to your latest album. That's the price of your decision. To me that's fair game, show a little muscle to your distributors, maybe get a better deal. Now, please don't try to spin this as some social injustice towards creative people. Just because you're an artist it doesn't mean you're immune to market laws. Taylor Swift is a billion-dollar business. Stop treating music fans like we're stupid.

[1] "Swift had sold over 40 million albums, 130 million single downloads and was one of the top five music artists with the highest worldwide digital sales" -- http://www.ifpi.org/news/Taylor-Swift-named-IFPI-global-reco...

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#278

Post by k-mcgrady »

sauere wrote: post #102
paukiatwee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And when you're making very, very little money, that 10% could be very important.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#279

Post by ethagknight »

jws wrote: post #50
mnx wrote: post #11

It seems really weird to me that apple would get away with paying nothing for the 3 months. Especially since it's not like they are anything but yet another competitor in an already crowded space.

This whole "pay nothing" idea is strange to see on HN. Apple developed the software, is footing the server, power, bandwidth, and ops bills for three months all for free. The labels are chipping in their content for three months. Sounds like everyone is bringing something to the table. Apple is incurring real costs. The labels, not so much. Three kinds of customers will try the service: People who buy their music: th…

Apple's enormous cost in launching the service is the best counterpoint I've read. 3 month free trial means no revenue for Apple too. Apple is certainly in a better position than most to endure atartup risk through trial.

There's another point being overlooked regarding how music is consumed: music is listened to repeatedly over months, and the free trial is no different than a promotional period. Artists, even indies, will still receive income from the myriad other services, and will soon receive a better rate from Apple. Distribution is an enormous service to the artists, and it's value shouldn't be overlooked.

That being said Taylor Swift has every right to pass on Apple's offer, and it's great for the recording industry to have a major check/balance like Swift.

Unrelated, but interested to see if artists will ever abandon the labels and go direct to distribution. I'm sure labels provide more value than people want to acknowledge.

Edit: formatting

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#280

Post by cwyers »

jmilloy wrote: post #267

Presumably, the labels are responsible, not Apple. Apple represents Apple's interests, while the labels are supposed to represent the artists'. Though in practice, the labels probably represent their own. So, presumably, the labels have decided that offering their content for free to Apple for 3 months will result in more revenue in the future, just as Apple has. Surely any artist understands the idea of giving away…

The problem here is that there's more than one label. Well, that's one problem. But the larger labels are more readily able to absorb this kind of hit than the smaller ones.

Another problem is Apple is threatening removal from the iTunes music store for nonparticipants. So it's not just that labels think they can make more money in the future if they agree, Apple is threatening to cut off their sales right now if they don't agree.

Another problem is that this is the same Apple that is pressuring record labels to cut off the free tier on Spotify, which labels get compensated for at the same rate as paid streams, because it "devalues the music." As if this doesn't.

Apple has a dominant market position in high-end smartphones (they make 90% of all smartphone profits) and they are using this to leverage other markets in ways that make Steve Ballmer look like Winnie the Pooh. They already tried to engage in ebook price fixing, now they are trying to bully Spotify out of existence.

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