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To Apple, Love Taylor

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Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#421

Post by georgemcbay »

rayiner wrote: post #369
w4 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Isn't this one of the big reasons for the rise of SaaS apps, though? Developers, unlike musicians, have found a way to combat piracy in a way that both consumers seem to prefer (lower upfront costs a…

Do consumers prefer SaaS? The reaction to Windows and Office becoming subscription software seems pretty uniformly negative.

For me it depends on the software and how much value new features bring to that software.

For two examples:

I've actually been pretty pleased with Lightroom/Photoshop as SaaS because these apps still often have new innovations that actually make my life easier as a hobbyist photographer. Thus I don't mind paying per month because I'd probably already be upgrading to the new version every year anyway and this is just spreading a similar cost out over time.

OTOH, Office's switch to SaaS is what finally pushed me over the edge to using free ("as in beer") alternatives... they can keep rejiggering the UI this way and that way but I can't imagine what they would add to Word or Excel that would make them seriously more useful to me, it was never a must-upgrade for me (YMMV if you work in an enterprise office setting or whatever) and thus the SaaS move is not good for my usage.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#422

Post by Steko »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #274
Steko wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think release in the window is a good point but the point of streaming services is to mitigate this by shifting a much larger percent of income to back catalog.

I also take issue with characterizing streaming income as a "ton of revenue" (perhaps you meant actual sales sales in which case somewhat irrelevent here?) while everything I've heard over the years is how streaming revenue is a small fraction of artist revenue, especially independents.

Here's numbers from a pro-spotify independent artist [1]:

$1,359 from spotify, that's apparently a career to date number.

http://www.popmatters.com/feature/193667-why-its-time-to-sto...

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#423

Post by StringyBob »

reagency wrote: post #368
StringyBob wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That link perfectly describes my concern with subscription systems. If Apple distribute the royalties calculated per-user rather than based on (total royalties / total number of listens system wide) I'll move over from spotify, as it will reward the bands I like more than the current system. I like that spotify pays royalties from free accounts, I dislike that I am effectively subsidizing this as a premium user. Howe…

You aren't subsidizing anything. You are paying market price for a product. The seller does bizdev how they choose.

Technically true. I think for the arts this is something of an unusual case I'd describe more as an emotional than a financial transaction. I'm paying for something that I could easily get (illegally) for free. My allegiance is to the music and musicians, not to apple, spotify or anyone else providing distribution, as such 'supporting the type of music I like' is a very strong selling point, (not strong enough for me to use Tidal though!)

I presume Apple are trying to establish differentiation through the 'radio' service, but since the baseline market requirement is the ability to listen to practically anything all-you-can-eat, it'll be hard for them to achieve it there.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#424

Post by nosideeffects »

latj wrote: post #418
buro9 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you happen to be this Summer's big record... in which case your one profitable window for your track will have has just been obliterated.

Lets say you are that artist. You have practiced, trained, studied. You have worked hard and have a rare natural talent. You sang the songs and played guitar. Now you have "this summer's big record". Two million children want to listen to your song (without paying any additional costs) 50-100 times over the next 3 months, and then never again. How much is that worth to society? How much money should you make from tha…

I think you completely missed the point. Using your own analogies of teachers, this would sort of be like a local government letting all the teachers know that they will be teaching kids without pay for the next 3 months. If this ever happened, any teachers that could would get the hell out of dodge.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#425

Post by kstrauser »

nosideeffects wrote: post #424
latj wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets say you are that artist. You have practiced, trained, studied. You have worked hard and have a rare natural talent. You sang the songs and played guitar. Now you have "this summer's big record". Two million children want to listen to your song (without paying any additional costs) 50-100 times over the next 3 months, and then never again. How much is that worth to society? How much money should you make from tha…

I think you completely missed the point. Using your own analogies of teachers, this would sort of be like a local government letting all the teachers know that they will be teaching kids without pay for the next 3 months. If this ever happened, any teachers that could would get the hell out of dodge.

It's really not like that at all. The teacher scenario has an opportunity cost: if they're busy teaching kids for free, then they're not available for teaching other kids for pay.

In the Apple Music situation, there's likely very little opportunity cost unless we believe that it's going to be so amazingly and instantly successful that it will cannibalize all current revenue streams.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#426

Post by tolmasky »

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…

But this IS kind of what happened! Ignoring temporarily the very good points below of this not being a good analogy (you'd have to take into account one app at a time, streaming, etc), this is essentially what happened "naturally" to the app market.

Go to top revenue: none of those apps are paid. They're all free (with in app purchase). The market itself "raced to the bottom" to a world where, yeah, most the apps actually succeeding due in fact operate as if they're "free" for x months, and then you make orthogonal purchases. Sure, no one is stopping you from charging 99$ for an app on the store, but most of us know that relying on that model is like hoping you're a NBA-level player (or rock star, ha!).

Developers aren't complaining, well, they are, but aren't desperate because we at least have created an alternative for ourselves. Sure, we all wish we could charge box-sale rates, but at least we;ve figured out something to do instead. Maybe this is what the music industry needs to do. Maybe I should be able to listen to anything I want but be able to in app purchase taylor swift emoji or t-shirts or what have you. Maybe that looks like an innovative industry as opposed to having come up with exactly ONE new idea of how to sell music (rhapsody style streaming) in the last 10 years. These are teens we're talking about here. Put a teen in a mall and tell me its hard to get them to buy something. Come On! If they're not buying the EXACT something you're offering, maybe its worth tweaking it just a TINY amount.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#427

Post by thadd »

latj wrote: post #418
buro9 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you happen to be this Summer's big record... in which case your one profitable window for your track will have has just been obliterated.

Lets say you are that artist. You have practiced, trained, studied. You have worked hard and have a rare natural talent. You sang the songs and played guitar. Now you have "this summer's big record". Two million children want to listen to your song (without paying any additional costs) 50-100 times over the next 3 months, and then never again. How much is that worth to society? How much money should you make from tha…

Take a look at The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#428

Post by KingMob »

logician76 wrote: post #419
gress wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By your logic, Apple should pay for the music and give it away free since they are the ones who will benefit. But that means that if revenues rise as a result of the new service, Apple should keep all the extra profit rather than sharing it with the artists. Is that what you really want?

Apple wants to give it away for free, not the artists. Apple needs the artists, hence they need to pay. Revenue rising with the new service will eat into the other revenue streams from sales. Subscription revenue has already been proven to be laughable with Spotify. Saying that Apple gets to keep all the extra profit because they paid the artists during arbitrary terms set by Apple is incredibly short sighted, as the…

> Subscription revenue has already been proven to be laughable with Spotify.

True, but that's because the labels keep the vast majority of Spotify's payout.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#430

Post by nmesse »

gress wrote: post #375
w4 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you explain why that wouldn't be a great deal for app developers? I develop iOS apps, and I'd love it if apple moved to a pay for use model. While it may be the case that pay-per-use would be a great model for developers (though I'm highly dubious that this is the case for anyone that isn't making a trivial $0.99 app), that isn't the main thrust of my hypothetical. The problem with this scenario is the loss of…

Pay-per-use would be far better for developers making deep apps that people actually use regularly than those making trivial 99c apps that are discarded quickly. Currently, an app like Omnioutliner or Clear that improves a person's productivity over years and is used 100-1000x as much as a 99c joke app can only command a 10x higher price and is then impeded by people being reluctant to pay so much up front. But... to…

I disagree. The truth is, some of my most used apps are the least important and/or cheapest. This is why, if we went with a pay by usage app store plan, the true winners would be the addictive, least useful apps.

I use the Spotify app 24/7, yet I use Editorial and Pythonista (both costing around $7), an app I value to a much greater degree, sometimes just -8h daily. And the truth is, while OmniOutliner is so much usefuler than say Pinterest, people spend a lot more time on Pinterest.

Don't get me wrong, I do see why the losers are probably the 99¢ apps, after all, you probably do not use those on a concurrent basis. Yet, if we go by the hourly usage, people use social networks like Pinterest and Facebook, games like Temple Run, and music services, to a much greater degree overall.

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