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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.
"shocking, disappointing" are the most common words I've heard use to describe Taylor Swift's music.
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.
"Shoulder the cost of three months of not being paid" ??? This is a brand new service, a brand-new revenue stream. It costs her, or any of the other "less fortunate" artists, not a single dime. In fact, it will still bring those "new artists" potential income as people who like what they hear on the stream may then purchase their music.
the RIAA (or whatever it's called) hold virtually all music at ransom until their fees are paid. Then the distributors have to take a cut to keep themselves in business (Apple, Amazon, etc). Then the music-buying public gets to pay... which they won't since they're all used to free or 99Â apps (why should quality music cost more). Or they just copy it from their friends for free? So where exactly is the rest of the money for the royalties supposed to come from. $9 per month for thousands of plays.... what's left to pay the artist? The whole business model is f'd up. Cut out the RIAA, go back to the pay-per-album model and give the money directly back to the owner(s) of the music.
This is just the sort of disruptive paradigm that all business should follow.
We're opening a new store, to get it established you're going to give away your stuff through us.
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After all that effort Apple made promoting Swift, this is how she treats them?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I've been an Apple user for 30+ years, have done work for them, know people within the company, etc. "Generous" is not a word associated with Apple in my experience....
" 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."
As always when people tell us, it's not about the money, it's about the principle, it's about the money.
something something something something.... I don't know what it said. The headline has been redacted by a big black, kinda square-ish looking thing with a number in inside of it. Should I file an FOIA request to get the rest?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Assuming she's for real in this respect, I appreciate her concern for her comrades in the industry. However, She's pulled her music from Spotify, and now she's pulling it from iTunes. So...she's living off Pandora royalties and CD sales? I mean, the album has been out for quite some time, so she's made most of her millions off it at this point anyway and this is more grandstanding than anything else...but if it were a new release, would she really be this adamant about giving up iTunes revenue, even if it spent a bit too much time in the 'Accounts Receivable' column?
Do you listen to music at all?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know about her music, but as of now, I say, horray for Taylor Swift.
Apple's business plan is "to get customers for OUR new business, we will give away YOUR music for free!"
Yeah. So, basically, Apple is saying that they, the world's most profitable company, require individual artists to DONATE THEIR WORK FOR FREE... to get Apple's business started.
And they're calculating that individual artists don't have any leverage, there's nothing they can do about it.
So, it's nice to see a singer whose work is selling millions of copies per month standing up to them.
Horray for her.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Until they run out of credit cards to sign up with.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
You'd think that someone worth a couple hundred million dollars would be able to launch their own pay-per-download site for their music and cut out the middlemen.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I think she's calling for a bit too much out of Apple. Apple has never made all that much money from music on ITunes; it was more of a way to encourage people who were amenable to paying about a dollar a track to do so while also using iTunes and buying iPods (and later iPhones), which is what Apple really wanted. Their money comes from hardware sales, after all. Before the iTMS, Apple had been running ads encouraging people to rip their own music for use in ITunes and on iPods (with a subtext that was permissive of music piracy).
The late entry of Apple into streaming, the decline of paid downloads due to streaming, and the lack of money in the music industry for all players make it clear that Apple still isn't interested in music as an actual source of revenues. Streaming looks like a way to keep their hand in, more than anything else.
The reality of music streaming is that there aren't many users, and the vast majority of them don't pay for it. Apple will probably not get more than 10 million paying users (and most likely fewer than that). That's about 30 million in revenues for Apple per ye
If you are running a startup, you would love a service that offers 3 month free trials with decent conversion rate. It would be easy enough to get a bank loan and cover expenses while subscriptions ramp up, so long as you can document your likely monthly profits afterwards.
Now it could well be that most musicians would rather be paid a salary than depending on fluctuating royalties. But the likes of Taylor Swift would actually be strongly against that. When you are on a salary and become a megahit, you would get a nice bonus and maybe stock grants, but nowhere near the actual value of your work.
Do you program at all?
I think you missed the funny. Of course, your post might be subtly sarcastic in which case I missed the funny.
Life is so complicated in ASCII....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If Apple needs to make more money, a better return on their investment would be to send more folks to Wash DC to get special treatment passed by the congress critters rather than taking it out on the artists. That's an investment return that will outdo Wall Street by orders of magnitude.
I'd be more interested to find out if he had a soul.
I'm sitting here humming Beethoven's Fifth and pondering the notion that there is a human being out there somewhere who thinks it's mere patterns of sound waves.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Swift has a hell of a PR team. She is in the news practically every other day for something. This is not done out of goodwill, this is a business decision.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I bet. Apple has more to loose than to gain, so I predict Apple management will come back with some gesture toward paying artists for the trial period. That's the smart thing to do anyway.
Also, good for her to take this role.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Apple can do no wrong. Just get used to it---unless you have more lawyers than they do.
On the one hand, Apple oughtta just suck up the 3 months as product/service investment and still make the royalty payouts, but the reality is that, given their track record, I'd be cheering for them as an artist as Apple's success would eventually be better for me in the long run anyway.
The *real* reality is that no artists makes any real money off physical album sales, downloads or streaming except the rare mega-acts like Metallica, U2, and presumably TS which the RIAA treat as loss-leaders, so Apple paying or not for first 3 months is moot to almost all signed acts, never mind indies
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
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.
The argument isn't about being paid or not but rather, how much. Apple isn't refusing to pay at all. But simply treating royalty as "if we get money, you get money". I see nothing wrong with this model.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard -- that's what is wrong with this model. If you don't understand why letting large corporations gamble other peoples money/property where only the corporation keeps any gains, then you must have been born after 2008.
If Apple is going to invest in developing is new service, then 100% of the investment cost needs to come from Apple.
The problem is, the music isn't the artist's property. The labels claim all the rights. The artists theoretical royalties invariably end up being a shit sandwich, without much bread. The labels signed the deal with Apple, because they know that the artists have signed away all their rights already.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I will never buy from Apple and will never develop for Apple platforms.
With all the sound and fury about people "stealing" copyrighted materials, how is Apple getting away with this?
Best as I can tell, EACH Instance should be punishable with thousands of dollars of fines and jail terms for those at Apple who authorize this.
It's not illegal. Apple either has permission from the rightsholders for the music they offer, or a statutory right to offer it, and doesn't offer the music for which they don't have permission or a right.
-- 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.
Hey, Taylor Swift, you aren't going to get much money out of Apple by complaining about how they license and sell music.
But have you considered suing them over the "Swift" language? Obviously, they are using your trademarked good name in order to sell their new language, and you can probably get a well-deserved buck out of them so that you don't have to starve.
Hey, it worked for Bob Dylan.
"Great classics" - you buy
"fast food music that will not stand the test of time" - you rent. Renting fast food music at a lower cost is the entire fucking point of a music subscription service.
... did the poor artists on Apple's music service sign something which allows Apple to distribute their music for free? Are new artists STILL giving away the rights to their own music? Has nothing been learned in the past 10-20 years? Or can these small labels & artists sue the living shit out of Apple over this?
I imagine Swift's reluctance has something to do with having a high-flying album still on the charts that will probably not be selling anywhere near as well 3 months from now.
If the shelf life of a musical recording is measured in months, then why does copyright in the recording subsist for two orders of magnitude longer (95 years)?
Example of her auto-tuned studio performance vs her actual voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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.
Well, you can still resubscribe for a long time if the constraint is to use different credit cards. Pretty much every single store you visit nowadays wants to give you a credit card. I already have about a dozen credit card number I could use. And remember that credit card expires and send you a brand new card periodically. I seriously hope for them that a credit card is not how they plan on identifying returning users...
Identifying users based on name, adresses and verifying the name based on credit card information seems a bit better.
When Garth Brooks did that, it was called GhostTunes. But his complaint was more about selling singles separate from the "context" of the album.
Let's assume that 30% of all revenue is being cashed in the first 3 months. The rest of 70% is spread over the 94 years and 9 months of copyright remaining. The artist gets the thick of it in the first 3 months and then everything else it trickling down as crumbles.
Labels are greedy and can wait. An artist might not be able to wait that long, let alone still be alive 50 years from now.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
If you are streaming it, you are using the exact same model that radio uses
True of Pandora, not of Spotify. Spotify users make their own playlists.
No you do not have a "right to be paid for your work."
If you are running a company and you need something I made as part of your business model you are damn well paying me for my work. Why should you get it for free? I don't care if in three months you are going to start paying me if your business is profitable, you built your business using my work, you are going to be paying me from the beginning.
Taylor Swift has every right to demand to be paid for her work. Every artist has every right to demand to be paid for their work. You didn't create it. Apple didn't create it. So who the fuck are you (and Apple) to decide they shouldn't get paid?
Start a job. You won't get paid for the first month if you're on a monthly salary.
But you do get paid. They don't say "work for us for three month for free, then if we decide keep you on, we will start paying you."
Apple isn't saying "we'll pay you in three months". They're saying "in order to promote our brand, you won't get paid at all for the stuff of yours we sell.
but wanting to get paid for work you didn't do (make the copy) is also extraordinary.
It is anonymous coward assholes like you, who think that art, and writing, and music-- in short, creative endeavours in general-- is not work, and shouldn't need to be paid for, who are the problem, not the solution.
Yes, I am aware that it is now possible to copy stuff for almost no money.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Taylor is today's Dolly Parton. T will be a force for music when she is in her 70s. She can sing, write and play her instruments. She is the consummate musician. And like Dolly she knows how to work with her audience.
Dolly told Elvis "NO" when he demanded half the right$ to Dolly's signature song. Dolly made the right decision, hooray for Dolly.
I've used Apple products since the IIe, so I'm not an Apple basher, but on this issue Apple can go piss up a rope.
I don't get it how did Apple get away with saying they won't pay royalties? Everyone else has to. What they just say "well we aren't making money so we don't have to pay"? Can I use that when I seed my torrents?
Free trial periods are fairly common and standard though; not just for internet services but in everything from telecoms to consumer products ("If you're not completely satisfied in 30-days return it for a full refund") to drug dealers.
So, does Apple's free trial period have a "if you're not satisfied, return all the music you got for free without paying the artists" clause?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Hater's gonna hate.
I've almost finished ripping them to MP3, too, so who needs streaming? It's all classical music, which I doubt Apple include in their new offering, so people like me don't needn't worry about being denied Taylor Swift's mind-numbing bilge. For the rest of us, there's always Radio Swiss's free online streaming radio (Jazz, Pop, and Classical)
With all the sound and fury about people "stealing" copyrighted materials, how is Apple getting away with this?
Best as I can tell, EACH Instance should be punishable with thousands of dollars of fines and jail terms for those at Apple who authorize this.
So you don't think that Apple spent months (likely years) negotiating the deal for this? They specifically set up the 3 month trial period followed by an *increased* share of the revenue for the rights holders (i.e., more than Pandora and Spotify are paying per track). All of this is set out in pages and pages of contracts.
Where's the "head explode with incomprehension of extreme stupidity" meme when you need it?
No wonder you forgot to log in. I'd be embarrassed too. How do you even tie your shoes?
U2 phony
You mean the phony who shamed the world into forgiving Africa the crippling cold war debts that were foist upon it. The phony who personally persuaded Bill Clinton to dismantle the IRA's Boston based funding? The Irish phony who stood up in Boston and definitely screamed "fuck the revolution" at the IRA leaders and financiers in their home town? I don't know what TS has done to make the world a better place but criticizing Apple is just not in the same league as Bono's "good deeds".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Given they named their new language after her.
Couldn't she put her album onto Apple Music, and when they don't pay her royalties for those 3 months, couldn't she sue Apple? Surely she can afford the legal fees that all the small artists can't.
Somehow, I think Apple's going to get by without her catalog for the next three months.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Let's assume that 30% of all revenue is being cashed in the first 3 months. The rest of 70% is spread over the 94 years and 9 months of copyright remaining. The artist gets the thick of it in the first 3 months and then everything else it trickling down as crumbles.
Labels are greedy and can wait. An artist might not be able to wait that long, let alone still be alive 50 years from now.
An easy (and capitalist) solution is to simply make copyright free for the first year and start charging per year after that.
The only issue with this I can think of is that it may encourage some no talent artists (I.E. most of them) to blatantly copy old works and sell them as their own, but this is easily fixed by having a longer automatic copyright term for commercial purposes only.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Copyright exists for the benefit of society, not because artists have "a right to be paid". (They have a right to "demand to be paid", since that's just free speech, but society is entitled to say "sod off" in reply.)
We're rapidly approaching the point where "sod off" is the most sensible reply - copyright is increasingly working against society rather than for it. This incident is just another brick in the wall.
film at 11.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Eddy Cue's tweet in respinse to Taylor Swift's letter: "#AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming, even during customer’s free trial period"
Ms. Swift has a ticket for Ship B.
Taylor Swift has somewhat of a prodigious talent for song writing and a knack for business. Not through money, but her personal talent. Just because you have a problem with her rare ability to pen a catchy pop song which made her rich, or don't personally like her music, you somehow think she doesn't deserve her success and should give all that money back? According to your logic people can only be rich if you work hard for decades? How many decades? Is 2 enough, or does it have to be 4? Or 6? What is the exact requirement of decades before someone earns their rewards in your world?
I just don't get why there are still these middle men (always men) in this time where an artist can literally directly connect with their fans (more pointedly: patrons). Is it just about the bandwidth?
Having the legal right to do something does not mean people don't have the right to protest. Taylor Swift spoke up and Apple changed. A much better approach than your suggestion that people just STFU.
Apple will tie this into their normal AppleID system. You could put 50 credit cards on it, it will be three free months per AppleID account. If you want to game it to get three months of free streaming music...good luck there. It's not just web form, AppleID also ties in the devices too. Your "new ID" for that "free streaming music" won't have access to your regular Itunes, messages, cloud storage, installed apps, etc. You'll have to log out of your regular account and sign into your new one. If you screw it up, you might even loose access to your Apple device itself.
Whomever is suggesting this as a course of action must not have any experience with the Walled Garden. I don't actually use Apple products personally, but I've been forced to support them for several years at work. The best / funniest support was a woman freaking out that her boyfriend had "hacked her phone", not realizing that everyone using the same ID across multiple devices will have access to everything like that. It's a feature of the OS...the Apple support chick and I laughed about it for awhile before she took over the client to help them "separate" it all into their own accounts, or maybe get some relationship counseling, I don't know lol.
you hire other people to clean houses
Here we go again! These artists are not losing any money or time to have their tracks played to a wider audience. They are just gaining potential new revenue in future. What Apple should have done is let artists opt out of the free trial and take a chance that people will establish different listening habits in the meantime.
Your model is basically saying that since the artists already did the work, "they're not losing any money or time" if somebody else gives away their music for free.
Yes, you can say that. After all, why should you ever pay any artist? They already did the work, so they aren't losing any money, right? People are merely using their work for free without paying.
Here's the problem: "recognition" doesn't pay bills. It's nice, it's flattering, it's great for the ego, and the net result is you starve. Apple's business model is that artists should be happy that Apple had decided to give their music away for free in order to promote Apple's new business, and they seem surprised that artists actually would prefer to be paid.
Here's a tip for you, for future reference in case it ever happens to you: when you're being told "you work for free, and maybe sometime later I'll pay you", no matter how good it sounds, the deal is always going to be to the advantage of the corporation getting the free work, and not necessarily for you.
Well, Apple backed down, at least a little. Good for them. Horray for Taylor Swift.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I don't see why musicians should do things according to how you think best.
I'm not much of a copyright fan, but this is a matter of commercial use of recent material. I have some sympathy for individual copying for personal use, and I have a lot of sympathy for ignoring older copyrights. This application of copyright is just what copyright was intended for.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes