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Apple To Pay Musicians For Free Streams, After All
vivaoporto writes: As reported on Re/code, Apple media boss Eddy Cue appears to have capitulated and Apple Music will be paying music owners for streaming even during customers's free trial period. He says Taylor Swift's letter, coupled with complaints from indie labels and artists, did indeed prompt the change.
Cue says Apple will pay rights holders for the entire three months of the trial period. He explains that it can't be at the same rate that Apple is paying them after free users become subscribers, since Apple is paying out a percentage of revenues once subscribers start paying. Instead, he says, Apple will pay rights holders on a per-stream basis.
No word from Swift or her camp about whether Apple's move is enough to get her to put "1989," her newest album, on Apple Music. On Twitter, she says, "I am elated and relieved. Thank you for your words of support today. They listened to us."
Cue says Apple will pay rights holders for the entire three months of the trial period. He explains that it can't be at the same rate that Apple is paying them after free users become subscribers, since Apple is paying out a percentage of revenues once subscribers start paying. Instead, he says, Apple will pay rights holders on a per-stream basis.
No word from Swift or her camp about whether Apple's move is enough to get her to put "1989," her newest album, on Apple Music. On Twitter, she says, "I am elated and relieved. Thank you for your words of support today. They listened to us."
So here's an interesting one. I am a musician in my spare time, and I have an album up on iTunes. It's a good job my life's income doesn't depend on this - we are talking tiny sums of money made, but it is my album and it's an achievement for me to have an album out there and hey - there are people that like it.
I have no idea if this album is included in streaming or not. I'm not signed to a label, and nobody has asked me if I want to be included or excluded. I would have thought, given the talk of "pulling the album" etc. that there must be a separate agreement I should have to make but I haven't seen anything at all about it.
The music was published via an intermediary, Ditto Music, but they're just a publishing service and not a label. In fact, I own the label it was published under and that is the label's sole release to date. What's the situation for musicians like me? Included, excluded, paid, unpaid...?
Meet the new boss, just as sleazy and thieving as the old boss.
well, at least until called out on it....
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Few people would object to granting artists a reasonable term of copyright, or to paying them for their work. Of course one can argue about what is "reasonable", but when looking at the original goals of patents and copyright, it is pretty clear that the duration of these have been extended to ridiculous lengths. Other unreasonable restrictions apply: IP holders think it is completely natural and acceptable to ask consumers to pay the full price multiple times for the same content in order to play it on different devices or to play it after upgrading their equipment to a different standard. Couple that with the fact that most labels pay a pittance to artists (have a platinum album and you can still be in the hole with the label), and the public soon loses its sense of paying a fair price for a fair value. So they pirate.
Personally I am OK with pirating stuff in order to send a message (whether they get it is another issue). Our government for a long time was of the same opinion, and decided not to prosecute people pirating stuff for personal use, as long as there was no reasonable legal alternative. For music, there are plenty of reasonable and affordable choices, and I haven't pirated music in the past 10 years or so. Movies and series are a different story; I still pirate these, but I did subscribe to HBO and Netflix to pay for their content that I "steal" from them. If Warner Bros or Sony offer me to buy a reasonably priced "license" for movies I've pirated from them (or better: include a convenient store with downloads), I'll pay them as well. e-Books? I'll pay for them if you'll sell them to me. If you refuse to sell to me for whatever reason (region), and offer insult to injury by offering me the physical book instead, then it's FU and off to the Pirate Bay for me.
What Apple did was something else. They decided to offer music on a free trial basis and not charge for that, in order to promote their new service (and presumably the music as well). That's fine, and in the end it could even have been beneficial to the artists, but Apple did not have the right to make that decision for the artists. If Amazon started to give away sellers' items for free for a while and not reimburse those sellers, they'd be pissed, and rightly so.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
And the plug worked! Listened to a few samples and decided to get it. Since I'm an instant gratification junky rather than wait and get it for free in a few days I threw money at Amazon. Look for your $0.02 royalty check in next months mail :)