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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.
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!”
The music business model has been predatory against artists since the player piano roll.
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?
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
Ah, the classic blunder of confusing physical goods with intellectual property.
You can wave a magic wand to get a house cleaned. Someone is running a service where a significant portion of users sign up to pay you some change for each cleaning after a 3 month free trial. Is it really a bad deal, even if it did take you a lot of time to make your magic wand?
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
as they investment of time and effort requires serious dedication.
A couple hours spent interviewing someone to hire to set it all up? Yeah, lots of time and dedication. I'm not saying she'd do it herself. She'd hire people to do it for her. You think Paris Hilton personally manages her cosmetics line?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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)
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
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.
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)?
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.
This is no "moral hazard" because this is a voluntary transaction between two private parties. Taylor Swift is free to take the deal or leave it, depending on how she sees the risks and benefits.
You're saying that if I and a bunch of musician friends want to develop a new streaming service for some niche market, you want to prohibit them from letting me use their music for free to get the service started in return for larger royalty payments later?
It's people like you and thinking like yours that creates the big, monopolistic corporations that we have.
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)
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.
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?
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