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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."
Apple finally has Swift support!
There are 2 types of people in the world - those who understand decimal and those who don't.
Never underestimate the marketing power of 20 million tweenage girls.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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...?
The information wants to be free, and the artists aren't any worse off for having their tunes downloadable by millions of people — they still have their own copies, so no theft has occurred, right? Right?
Intellectual property — as I read on this very site — is an artificial and oppressive construct and must be resisted!
Troll my foot — do try to reconcile Slashdot's usual attitude towards rights of intellectual property owners with the celebratory attitude in reaction to TFA.
I dare you to come up with a coherent explanation of why pirating music (or duplicating patented designs, whatever) is Ok for some people and corporations, but not for Apple...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Euro-laws. The very reason your economy sucks and you have 20% unemployment.
Good point. That's why so many Europeans work two full time jobs and live in their cars. Lucky for Europe a large percentage of their population is in prison or the economy of so many towns built entirely on the local prisons, would collapse.
Oh wait - that is the USA.
Oh well, lucky for the USA the entire European economy is built on debt... oh, crap - that is the USA too.