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To Apple, Love Taylor

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Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#431

Post by belorn »

byuu wrote: post #334
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…

I'm not making any statement on whether it's good or bad, right or wrong, but ... 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. Scarcity has gone out the window. Now if only our increased productivity and automations led to lesser and lesser worki…

> increasingly difficult to sustain yourself solely as an artist.

The number of ways to sustain yourself has significant increased in recent times, and some of those don't even use copyright as a mean for revenue. They are by nature immune to piracy.

Taken Patreon and kickstarter. You can not pirate art which has not been created. An artist can decide how much wages they demand rather than find an other job, which incidental is how the job market works. If they agree to a certain amount, they get paid and do the work agreed on. Everyone walks away happy, the artist got paid, and art is created.

What is getting harder to do is getting repeatable paid for work you done in the past. Most programmers do work for hire, and they survive quite well on not being paid for every copy of work they once made. So long there is a strong interest for new work to be created, old work will be what validate the artist current pay.

I know a web comic that update twice a month and the author current gets paid $5k a month to do so. No copyright is involved, no police and no SOPA. Just an artist and their fans, enabled to be sustained by the basic model of people wanting more art to be created and a way for that to happen. When we describe the future as "people doing things solely because they enjoy it" we limit the market available to artist to how it was done in the past, and it seems artist themselves are instead choosing to find new ways rather than to close up shops.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#432

Post by baddox »

mikehearn wrote: post #342
blankenship wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of economic differences between music and apps Are there? (At least for independent musicians?) From my experience, it seems like a decent comparison—you can make an app or album for $2000 or $200k.

To me there are, but I'm open to discussion. - Different pricing. Apps can be anywhere from $1 to $500, while songs typically hover around $0.99. The wide variance in app pricing makes a subscription model challenging to satisfy all users and developers. - Different markets. When you make an app, you're tying it to be used on a specific platform. It is additional work to make it cross-platform. That alone is limiting…

> while songs typically hover around $0.99.

This is slightly off topic, but it seems that iTunes song prices have silently increased to $1.29, which is a huge increase. There are still some $0.99 songs out there, but most of the tracks I buy are $1.29.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#433

Post by pablovidal85 »

Heliosmaster wrote: post #69
pablovidal85 wrote: post #24

What stops her from joining after the 3 month trial period?

Everyone who signs up has 3 months free trial from that day, not that the first 3 months of the service (since it goes live) are free for everyone.

Still, she could join in once a desired number of users finished their trial period and started paying.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#434

Post by dublinben »

vacri wrote: post #101
unfamiliar wrote: post #27

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.

Or she and her label recognize that the back catalog is not as valuable as the latest album. Giving away access to the back catalog on free streaming services will act to develop fans, and increase purchases of the new album. This new album that is not available on free streaming services.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#435

Post by Fargren »

themartorana wrote: post #350
zxcvcxz wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being deceptive, Fargren is on point. Once the dev leaves the company they no longer make that salary. Artists typically get paid some kind of royalty and don't give up full ownership of their work. >Without being able to charge multiple times for the same piece of software, there would be no Microsoft, IBM, or Oracle, no SaaS, and no App Store Good riddance.

You're being deceptive That's not very nice. Who do you think owns SaaS businesses, or App Store apps, or downloadable software, etc.? I own a software company. If I couldn't resell my software over and over, I'd be homeless. If it couldn't sell software over and over, I'd have to fire all my employees (dev, customer support, marketing...) and shutter my business. Do you think artists don't have employees? Is their m…

If I couldn't resell my software over and over, I'd be homeless.

I don't think you are being deceptive, but I suspect you are being facetious (hard tot ell in the internet). If you lived in a world where you couldn't resell your software, you'd have a different job that didn't depend on that. I imagine the people you provide value to would probably be willing to fund the development of the products they use. That is effectively what they are doing now, but they do it in a roundabout manner. If not all of them would(and there are game-theoretic reason why they probably shouldn't) maybe the ones that would could pay more, or maybe your product just wasn't worth so much to begin with (please don't take this as an affront to your product, I don't even know what it is).

Different property models lead to different viable businesses. I am saying I don't like the current model because it forbids certain endeavors I would love to see, and that we had before. Of course it would be harmful to some business plans that currently work. I just prefer the alternative.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#436

Post by prawn »

conradev wrote: post #363

> I respect the company and the truly ingenious minds that have created a legacy based on innovation and pushing the right boundaries. > ... just like the innovators and creators at Apple are pioneering in their field > ... we admire and respect Apple so much. > I think that is beautiful progress. We know how astronomically successful Apple has been... > I say this with love, reverence, and admiration for everything…

Was going to post the same. Her points obviously stand regardless, but this is an epic example of "I love Apple, but..." There's almost more gushing than criticism.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#437

Post by fauigerzigerk »

slantyyz wrote: post #406
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The most basic cost you have to recoup is that of making the song (studio, musicians, production, what you charge for your voice etc). This remains real money, even if you can make a digital copy of a song for free. Absolutely, but that is fixed cost not unit cost. Not recouping fixed costs is bad. But losing money on top of that for every unit you give away is even worse. The distinction matters just as much as in…

> Absolutely, but that is fixed cost not unit cost. Isn't your unit cost = Cost of Goods Sold / Units Sold? Wouldn't the fixed cost producing the music be amortized (over some arbitrary number of years) into the Cost of Goods Sold to produce an accurate picture of unit cost? > A better analogy to giving away iPhones would be to play a live gig for free. Or how about this analogy: 3 months of free wireless service wit…

Whatever you may call it, I think the distinction between fixed cost and whatever each unit costs you on top of that is very important when we're talking freebies. The correct term is probably marginal cost.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#438

Post by rndstr »

nemik wrote: post #30
sanswork wrote: post #20

3 months free to buy market share makes sense but I am amazed to hear that they are doing it by just not paying the content producers during those 3 months. I'd be doing the same thing in her place. Apple has the cash to run a loss leader on this.

From http://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2015/6/13/apples-cash-dilem... it seems like Apple may not actually have the cash to do this, not in the USA at least and it would need to pay taxes on the cash it is holding outside the US to pay the majority US labels/producers/artists. Not that this excuses what they're trying to pull here or anything. By trying to weasel out of paying any US taxes, they can't spend their own…

> it seems like Apple may not actually have the cash to do this

Maybe they could do a Kickstarter campaign?

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#439

Post by WalterBright »

byuu wrote: post #334
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…

I'm not making any statement on whether it's good or bad, right or wrong, but ... 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. Scarcity has gone out the window. Now if only our increased productivity and automations led to lesser and lesser worki…

On the other hand, historically, art hasn't paid very well. I suspect the modern artists-get-rich era started with Elvis. That era may be an aberration and be drawing to a close.

In my own profession, writing compilers, you simply can't sell them anymore. That hasn't deterred me from continuing to do so, I just adapt and find other ways to make a living from the business.

Re: To Apple, Love Taylor

#440

Post by mcintyre1994 »

krisdol wrote: post #362
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about your Spotify question, but I believe Taylor Swift pulled all her music from there because they wouldn't agree to making it paid only (referring to their freemium offering and not the trial there). I think that's why beyond this she has so much respect for Apple's offering - they're obviously already an important player and artists want paid - and only paid, streaming.

Honestly from the point of view it's pretty good for consumers. Making her album paid-only would have improved the conversion-to-premium rate, whereas making her album free increases active users. I guess they opted for more users, maybe to look more attractive for more funding?

Yep, they do have a fantastic conversion rate though - last I read was 15m paying of 60m users [0] - 25% must be among the best for freemium. So in that sense I can see why they probably optimise heavily for more users.

I imagine there are a fair chunk of artists who would take the premium only route if they could too - I guess they want to avoid that.

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/12/spotify-60...

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