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Taylor Swift: Apple's Disdain For Royalties Is 'Shocking, Disappointing'
Mark Wilson writes to note that Apple Music, yet unlaunched, already faces resistance on several fronts. From the BetaNews article:
It's not just smaller, independent labels that are complaining about Apple's refusal to pay artists any royalties during the initial three month free trial period. Taylor Swift has added her voice to the growing number of complainants, writing an open letter to Apple in which she says she will withhold her new album "1989" from the service. In the letter, entitled "To Apple, Love Taylor," the singer says that the company's decision not to make royalty payments is "shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company." Swift is an artist who could afford to shoulder the cost of three months of not being paid by Apple, but she has chosen to make a stand and stick up for those who are less fortunate.
Apple really needs to write off the cost as part of their marketing plan. This three months free is their advertising cost and should not be shouldered by the performers.
Well, looks like /. ate and posted an incomplete post of mine. I guess I won't try writing any posts from my phone in the future, if their UI is going to be this crappy. Let's try again, with a few revisions:
I think she's calling for a bit too much out of Apple.
Apple is a hardware company; any products or services they offer other than hardware are only relevant to them because they think it'll help them sell hardware. Apple also has a justified complex regarding self-sufficiency. More on that presently.
When listening to compressed music on computers began to take off, Apple responded by buying SoundJam MP, modifying it, and releasing it as iTunes. Mostly this was to sell computers -- making sure that people knew that Macs were well-suited to storing, organizing, and playing music files, and could also rip and burn CDs. It was also part of their complex to not rely on third parties to provide important features, and this was now deemed an important feature, with the iPod beginning development shortly after the purchase of SoundJam, and with iTunes to be the syncing software for it.
Releasing a Windows version of iTunes, and selling music via the iTunes Music Store were both just strategies to sell more iPods. Apple figured that some people would buy downloaded music at the 99 cent price point, and that some of them might even be former pirates. The store's label-mandated use of DRM would also help lock customers into the iTunes ecosystem, helping to sell more iPods.
Streaming is just more of the same; because of free streaming, many people who would buy music, or who would pirate music, have flocked to listen to music legally for free (at the expense of having to use bandwidth to stream, not having offline copies, and losing some degree of choice in what you're listening to when. Also, ads). While the iPhone is now more important than the iPod, Apple likes having people locked into the iOS ecosystem. They like having people buy iOS devices, on which music listening is still a core feature (and will continue to be, e.g. with the CarPlay platform). Streaming has become important, and like all important things, it can't be left in the hands of third parties. Therefore Apple must provide music streaming.
But music streaming is a crappy business. Almost all the users stay in free tiers; a mere handful actually pay. Apple's plan is to draw users in with a free time period and then hope for a good attach rate when the time comes for users to either cancel or pay to subscribe. I doubt that Apple will get more than 10 million paying customers (and therefore will only get revenues of around $200 million their first year, and around $300 million in later years after accounting for payments to rightsholders). Frankly, they can find more money than that in their couch cushions. Apple isn't interested in streaming for how profitable it is (read: it really isn't). And I'm sure that they know that in the absence of free streaming, most people will go right on back to pirating music again (with some returning to the iTunes Store, which suits Apple fine).
The whole point of Apple's streaming service therefore is just to keep their hand in, and to prevent a potential rival from being in a position where Apple is so dependent on the rival that the rival has power over Apple.
So can Apple pay rightsholders during the free period? I'm sure they can afford it. Although it makes no economic sense for Apple, as it would cost over $20 million per million free users, and with low attach rates expected, this could easily run over a billion dollars in payouts for a business expected to generate far far less than that. It's frankly not important enough to them to do it. Putting up with Taylor Swift whining at them, and rightsholders loudly complaining that the world is no longer stuck in the 80's and early 90's, is not too big of a cross to bear.
Apple's options other than a free trial period are a free tier, or no free anything. We already know what Swift thinks about
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
A hundred posts and not a single post yet pointing out that Apple's deal with the labels, while paying nothing for the trial period, pays MORE than the anyone else in the industry (spotify, pandora, etc.) after that point. There's a reason the labels agreed to the deal; it's not like they're stupid or weak, after all.
The music business model has been predatory against artists since the player piano roll.
Correction: The music business model has been predatory against performers since the player piano roll.
The music business has been predatory against COMPOSERS (also "artists," i'd think) since Petrucci first popularized music printing around the year 1500. You can read about the details here for example, but early music publishers and patrons generally took advantage of composers -- preferring to publish collections of "greatest hits" and getting copyright protection granting exclusive privileges to PUBLISHERS, not the artists who actually created the music. On the few occasions where composers were granted privileges in the 1500s, publishers frequently ignored them and published whatever they wanted anyway, without necessarily giving any money to composers whatsoever.
You have to wait about 75-80 years after music printing first became popular before any composer was really granted a sort of international copyright privilege for his own works that seemed to "stick" (which was granted by the French king and the Holy Roman Emperor to Orlande de Lassus). Composers before that who tried to print their own works were sometimes sued or fined for illegal "printing without a license." (You think I'm joking... I'm not. And you think publishing cartels trying to control artists is new? It's not -- there's a VERY long tradition.)
Anyhow, the point is that any new technology will always try to exploit artists during the period of transition. Moving music around on the internet in electronic form is barely 20 years old. It could be years or even decades before all of the "dust settles" and artists finally establish secure rights in this new medium... if ever.
From an NPR interview with Ms Swift:
Interviewer: Like I said, I am the mother of a 12-year-old girl, and she loves your music. Her friends love your music. You have a huge platform among a very vulnerable, impressionable set of the population. And I wonder if you think about turning your lens outward, turning it away from the diary page, and sending a broader message to girls who would be really receptive to hearing about big ideas and the big world that's outside.
Swift: Like what kind of messages?
Interviewer: Well, other characters. I don't mean to minimize the effect of a love song or a pop song. But do you ever think about writing about other experiences, things that might turn girls away from themselves in a different way?
Swift: There's nothing that's gonna turn girls away from themselves at age 12...I think the best thing I can do for them is continue to write songs that do make them think about themselves and analyze how they feel about something and then simplify how they feel. Because, at that age — really at any age, but mostly that age — what can be so overwhelming is that you're feeling so many things at the same time that it's hard to actually understand what those emotions are, so it can turn to anxiety very quickly.
I'm not a fan of Ms Swift's music (I'm not a 12-year-old girl) but I do have a healthy amount of respect for the way she conducts herself in public.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein