Update: As we suspected, this appears to be a misunderstanding on Newcombe’s part. An Apple spokesperson told Rolling Stone that it is not threatening to remove music from its iTunes store if artists don’t agree to it’s streaming terms.
Anton Newcombe, frontman for Brian Jonestown Massacre, has posted a series of tweets attacking the fact that Apple is paying nothing to artists for streaming their music on Apple Music during the three-month free trial. His tweets claim that Apple told him that his music would be pulled from iTunes if he didn’t agree to the company’s terms for the streaming service.
[tweet https://twitter.com/antonnewcombe/status/611124094227087360 align=’center’]
The fact that Newcombe references a fake Twitter account in one of the tweets suggests that he may not have done due diligence on whatever was actually said to him. A misunderstanding may be more likely than a genuine threat to remove music from iTunes – especially as we already know that Apple won’t be streaming the entire iTunes library.
However, his comments that “the biggest company on earth wants to use my work to make money for 3 months and pay me nothing” and “Apple has more cash reserves than all of these nations yet they want to use my work for free” do reflect views expressed elsewhere in the music industry …
British music industry lobby group UK Music said earlier this week that the lack of payment for the free-trial period could leave indie labels “completely screwed” as they see fewer downloads during the three-month trial. Billboard reported that music bodies in other countries have also expressed similar concern.
Australia’s independent music companies trade body AIR voiced its concerns over the royalty-free arrangement and told its members it wouldn’t endorse the contract on offer. The trade body also noted “many of our members have already expressed very real concerns about the consequences” of signing on the dotted line. U.S. indies body A2IM issued an alert last week to its own membership in which it noted iTunes download royalties could be cannibalized by Apple Music and it urged members to “not feel rushed to sign Apple’s current offer.”
It has also been reported that Taylor Swift, who famously pulled all her content from Spotify, will not allow Apple Music to stream her best-selling album ‘1989’ (though her back-catalog will be available).
Apple Music launches on 30th June via an all-new Music app, individual monthly subscriptions priced at $9.99 in the U.S., €9.99 in Eurozone countries and £9.99 in the UK – lower prices applying in some other markets.
Via Billboard. Image: Wondering Sound.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
that does not sound good at all. Not very “friendly” like they say they are.
Based on his version, no they are not. But only based on his version.
Actually, it’s based on a lot of independent artists’s versions. This guy is just one artist out of many citing essentially the same complaint about Apple Music.
Well, that would be a troll’s take on it. Are you a troll?
Why not one month free trial – I think that would pacify the artists. I can understand the artist point of view. I know three months of lost income would put a hurting on me.
Especially when the people that are signing up for the streaming services are probably not buying CDs or digital downloads, which means the artists REALLY are reliant on whatever they can get from streaming services. Just because the reseller (Apple in this case) wants to run a promotion to attracts subscribers doesn’t mean the artists have to “give away” the use of their product for the promotional period. Heck, Apple paid U2 a ton of money to “give away” the recordings for that promotion, do you think U2 would have signed up to “give away” a CD’s worth of music? Not likely. It’s not like these artists make a ton of money per song that’s streamed. How much do they make when you listen to a song? fractions of a penny by the time it gets filtered down the chain. They have to rely on people streaming the songs many, many times just to squeeze out a profit.
If you look at Spotify’s website, the royalty per song streamed costs is minuscule. Here’s a link to Spotify’s site that explains how they pay royalties. http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#how-we-pay-royalties-overview
Why not they do whatever they want to promote their service if they want to get into the streaming business but they still pay for whatever they are using to do it. The companies that get people paid for what they are selling are the ones that should be in business. Not the ones that build business models based upon people not getting paid. This is not just about apple. This is about human beings respecting each other. That is why we have a minimum wage. Apple shouldn’t be asking artists to give their product free to build their service because it should be against the law. Spotify shouldn’t be doing it either. What is the result? Some artists might not get paid if these services don’t exist. It all depends on what your value system is. I personally value feeding people through jobs more than I do access to music. So if some musicians can’t make .75 cents a month by getting their music out there so what, they need to be doing something else to feed themselves anyway. These services need to include product from people that they can afford to pay. That way they can’t have everything because that would be too expensive and other services can exist for other niches that figure out how to curate, promote quality and get artists paid. We don’t need one monolithic services that figures out how to please consumers by devaluing artists so that they can make their money.
Sometimes it is ok to not make a sale if making a sale still means that you can’t feed yourself. Streaming services should have to pay both for the rights to the library and a portion of streaming. There is a value to having a long tail search engine because people will only go to a long tail search engine. They won’t keep revisiting one that doesn’t have what they are looking for. One way to also thing about it is that even if the artists songs are listed for free by apple. Every time someone does a search for a given band name. That band gets paid if they are listed. Because they are the brand that is giving apple a user. If they user wants that band and apple doesn’t have it they might loose the user. So pay for play and pay for giving apple a long tail to keep users interested. I think the pay for the long tail needs to be considerable. I feel the same way about google. These search monopolies need to exist at our pleasure. Not because once they have a comprehensive index they make so much money that they get to set all the rules. That is relationship like a monarchy or dictatorship. Where a massive amount of people are just dictated to by a singular entity that has no more need to concern itself with the opinion of the masses. And it doesn’t have any relation to the real reason that we want free capitalism, which is so that we protect upward mobility and freedom from tyranny. Not so we can transition people into extreme wealth and power so they can limit the freedom of others and crush all competition. Once you become as big as a government you need to be regulated as such. That doesn’t block innovation. It just puts it back where it should be, in garages, not at Hooli where if you use their machines to create a new idea you don’t own it.
“The biggest company on earth wants to use my work to make money for 3 months and pay me nothing”
What part of “Free Trial” does he not understand? Jackass.
It’s a free trial on the customers end. Not the artist, you fucking idiot. An artist should be paid by Apple regardless of a free trial imposed by Apple.
Nope. They can go elsewhere. If they’re smart though, they’ll stick with Apple, which, in the end will net them far more money than any other competing service. Luckily, most of the artists have smart financial advisors who tell them the reality, which is that in the big picture, sticking with apple will make them more money.
It’s called promotion. Most artists and publishing companies let their stuff play on the radio for free for a bit. This isn’t any different. The fact is that Apple’s service will likely be huge and these artists stand a chance to make more money due to a larger subscriber base.
The music industry is evolving and artists and publishers need to also. Same thing happened with print. I have discovered and listen to more smaller obscure artists since I’ve subscribed to Spotify than when I was buying albums or going to shows. These smaller bands would have never received anything from me if it wasn’t for them putting their stuff on the streaming service.
**facepalm**
Apple won’t make money off the artist until the user signs-up fot the service, in that moment, the artist is going to make money too. That’s what Andrew meant. it’s not hard too understand.
pfffsss bullshit. Free is free. How does the artist lose here if Apple later has a market base for sales and streaming and pays them? No other company is paying artists for free trials either. Get your facts straight.
I don’t think you understand. The thing is that people have to pay royalties when they play a song whether or not they are charging money for people to listen to the songs. Look at traditional radio stations. Radio stations have to pay money for the use of the songs they play on the radio and people don’t pay to listen to traditional terrestrial radio. Look at TV, everytime a song is being played as part of a TV show or advertisement, they have to pay licensing fees to use the recording unless they signed a contract to have full rights regardless of how many times it’s played in on the TV, which is a free service. Just because Apple wants to offer people a 90 day trial is Apple’s decision and it shouldn’t affect them STILL paying proper licensing fees for the right to use their tracks. I think Apple is acting beyond reasonable behavior on this. Tim Cook is really acting like an ego maniac on this. It’s simply “no right”, so I believe that Tim Cook has to change his stance. I also think that offering unsigned artists to post music without having legal representation is a complete mistake and it’s going to cause a chain reaction of copyright infringement because your average person is not going to have all of the legal contracts signed by other parties then they use other musicians on the recordings or if they use samples of other recordings on any music uploaded. It’s going to cause Apple a lot of legal hassles and statutory fines since Apple would be held liable for any tracks posted that have copyright infringement since it’s a fee based service where Apple makes money. I think it would be in Apple’s best interest to sign up with RIAA and become an actual REAL distributor and figure out how they are going to scrutinize each track uploaded to ensure that it’s actually legal to post on their service.
Whoa hang on there. First off, people don’t have to pay a freak’in dime when they play a song, commercial establishments do. If I play a song I bought at my house party, there’s nothing RIAA or anyone can do. Second radio stations don’t just play songs, they intermix ads with that content for revenue, so they should pay for it. Third, the artists don’t get paid direct at all guy. It all goes to labels that have contracts with artists. So if the labels want to be part of the promo, how is that Apple’s fault?
This is a free, ad free trial where Apple makes zero. Technically, Apple is paying to for the data costs… if you get specific about it, the labels and artists should pay apple for the content delivery mechanics and cost overhead.
If you’re an artist and fail to understand business, then go cry elsewhere. If you don’t want to be part of the promo, opt out and stop whining. You’re not getting paid for breathing.
You make a fair argument that artists who want to stream their music on the internet should pay for that service. Like on amazon, if you want a seller account you have to pay to have your product on the service. What you are failing to admit or understand is how streaming services attract people to them in order to be able to deliver music to people. If apple opens a service that they monetize by allowing musicians to pay to sell their music. They will have a tiny amount of music and their service will not be relevant or competitive with other music services and they will not be able to continue to demand enough money from artists to have a viable business model. When other services offer a comprehensive library, by not charging artists to get their music on the platform. So what happens then. They pretend that they are doing you a favor by creating a way to take everyone’s content so that they can be a complete and relevant source of music. Then they attempt to give you the minimum ability to make money off of their now comprehensive and highly competitive service. So they depend on having a long tail of essentially free product to them for their existence, but then refuse to acknowledge that their profits are based upon that long tail and that the people that make it up deserve compensation beyond the few plays that their individual songs receive. They effectively want the industry and the product to exist but want to absorb none of the creation costs in the long tail. Those people that are defenseless without legislation and/or unions. It’s just like the scam where you install a program that takes a fraction of a penny from each transaction from millions of people and divert it into a bank account until you are a billionaire. The same model google uses to justify not share advertising revenue with the highly relevant results created by other people that they populate their search engine with.
Imagine the owner of a mall one days says, “hey customers, in order to attract you here, for the next 3 months i’m gonna allow you walk into any store and take whatever available merchandise you want without paying for it.” And then the mall owner turns to the tenants and says “Oh, by the way, I’m not gonna reimburse any of you for anything the customers take the entire time”.
If a tenant objects to that, are you going to call the tenant a “Jackass”?
BTW, I am going to go ahead and say not very much surprises me how far people will go to defend anything Apple does no matter the morality of it. And I understand it, because there is an element of human nature that drives such a mentality. But just think about that scenario for a moment, and if the answer to your question is ‘Yes’, then allow this comment to reference itself.
That literally has nothing to do with this.
I think a more appropriate analogy would be if the mall owners allowed the customers to borrow (download) merchandise from their tenants without compensating them during the three month trial and would need to sign up for a monthly subscription to keep borrowing (downloading) more merchandise.
Apple is not giving it away in perpetuity, they’re using the prolonged trial to get people hooked on their service and hopefully convert a higher percentage into paying subscribers.
In all fairness, Apple has enough cash stashed away to pay these artists during the free trial and simply write off the royalties as the cost of entering the streaming market but Apple doesn’t have to since most artists, or at least the big labels, see this as a short term sacrifice for long term profits.
You can debate the morality of Apple’s position all you want but not maximizing their negotiating leverage to get the best deal for Apple bottom line would be a breach of their fiduciary duty to their shareholders.
Joe,
I think the analogy stands. I think I see what you’re saying with the idea of customers taking something they can perpetually consume. But a tenant can be selling gourmet popcorn or disposable batteries or car parts. Those are items a customer would have to continually take from the tenant. But regardless of whether customers are taking items they can perpetually consume, the analogy accounts for the fact that customers are only allowed to do this for 3 months and thus implies afterwards they would have to resume paying the tenants for the merchandise. Furthermore it states that the owner is doing it to attract customers.
Except that no inventory is lost with streaming music. They can STILL sell that same item to the same customer if he or she chooses to buy it. These “artists” need to stop whining.
Timmy XXX:
You are aware aren’t you that Apple, like absolutely every other for profit business, cares not one jot about you other than how much money you have available to spend on their products and that YOU, like these artists you are criticising, are simply pawns to be trampled on so that Apple can make more money?
I love Apple stuff, but I’m so pleased Stockholm Syndrome hasn’t effected me like it has so many who frequent these forums.
Timmy Troll is right. The absence of a fixed inventory component makes this analogy irrelevant. I agree with you in thinking that Apple should just pay the artists for the three months and consider it an investment in their new service. But, I disagree with the premise of your analogy. =)
Aunty Troll, you’re right when speaking of the company as a whole, especially stockholders, and Apple’s obligation to them. However, you’re completely delusional if you don’t think there is a myriad of top Apple employees, specifically some of the executives like Ive, that are encouraged, and inspired to make the best possible products to make people live happier, better lives. Ive loves making the best possible products. If you really think Ive cares how much money the company has, setting aside his desire to have the best possible opportunity to make the products, you’re just crazy. The idea is simple for many of them…make products we love, and products people want to buy, and the company will thrive. It’s art to many of them, and everyone needs to make money, but every artist wants their work to be loved and cherished by as many people as possible.
“The absence of a fixed inventory component makes this analogy irrelevant. I agree with you in thinking that Apple should just pay the artists for the three months and consider it an investment in their new service. But, I disagree with the premise of your analogy. =)” – Jessie Nichols
Wrong. It’s actually a pretty solid analogy.
The absence of a fixed inventory is irrelevant – a product is being used by a customer, and that’s what’s relevant. The use of the product is what determines it’s worth in this case, not the ease of acquiring it.
From a rare vinyl record that someone has to go to specialty shop, or streaming a song without even leaving bed, the product – the song – is being listened to by the customer. That’s the end use of the product.
There’s no apparently fair reason for artist’s product to be used for three months at the cost of the artist’s royalties that would accrue from plays during that period, instead of being paid for by Apple. To act like artists should consider it an investment, or even as promotion for their product by accepting these terms is just silly to me. Many of these artists don’t NEED the promotion or the “investment” – they’re likely to be listened to during that period anyway.
The artists and music are WHAT BRINGS THE VALUE TO APPLE MUSIC – not the other way around. The music is available elsewhere. It’s just a terribly bitter experience to make artists and labels go through to get to the glory land that is “Past the Three Free Months.” Apple (probably my favorite company, since my Apple ][ computer in the early 80s) is completely dropping the ball here – two Apple CEOs have told us how important music is to them – step up and pay the royalties. Maybe there’s some sort of reason for it that we aren’t being told about. Like how Apple used to HAVE to charge for system upgrades on the iPod Touch (http://www.macworld.com/article/1131991/ipodtouch.html).
Either that or Apple is just being uncool – It’s happened before.
How is Apple “making money” during the free trial?
It doesn’t matter if Apple’s making money or not, when a song is being played, royalties must be paid. PERIOD. It’s a law. Federal Law actually.
Shows how little you know about actuality
Actually it’s punishable by death and then your body is hung outside the music hall of fame to show the serfs not to mess with the king, who they didn’t vote for in the first place.
lmao… law? Really?
Apple isn’t making money during the 3 month trial either. :-P
They are building market share and therefore Apple significantly benefits from the 3mo trial. The artists do not. While I don’t think it’s a huge deal, I do see the point from the artists point of view. I know if it was my money my take might have been different but I think Apple would have been better off paying royalties during the 3mo trial as part of the cost of doing business. The goodwill the criticism would have probably made it a good investment
Yeah, I see what you’re saying. If this is true Apple is being somewhat of a bully but at the end of the day the artist has an option, they could refuse to be on Apple Music knowing they will lose their spot on iTunes. Life is full of compromises though, and the flip side to this is a compromise where the artist loses 3 months worth of royalties to continue their placement on iTunes.
How do the artists not benefit from Apple pulling in tens, potentially hundreds of millions of free trial memberships, which could net far, far greater paid memberships after the free trials are over? A three month free trial is huge, and Apple could have a hundred million plus trying it out, and after three months, a lot of people won’t want to be without it.
You are right in their are building market share by allowing the 3 free months. But Apple will only make money indirectly from Apple Music. Similar to the App Store, Apple only gets 30%, and I am sure most of that will go to operating cost + advertising etc.
In the end the artist benefits the artist as well
If they decide to make an investment and pay it off from their pocket for first three months, according to Apple’s expected number of signups(100mills), they’ll be paying artists out at least $2.1 billion over 3 months just to the musicians. That’s a heavy investment for a new service for them considering that they were the market leader in music for quite sometimes through iTunes. But either way I think Apple should’ve taken the hit and paid the musicians OR not come up with the trial model at all. They are fucking up with their deal makings these days in the absence of SJ.
Let’s not forget the fact that if someone hears a song by an Artist that they like they might actually seek out the whole album and others from said artist. This would be a huge plus for an artist to let their music be used in the trial period. I know everyone seems to think that people don’t actually buy music anymore, but those that are into Music beyond just the hits dig a bit deeper into artist catalogs once they find something they like and actually buy the music, not just lease time with it.
Actually Apple doesn’t benefit, it pays the electricity, facilities, equipment, and bandwidth fees during this time. The artists don’t pay a dime.
So maybe what Apple should do is pay the artist $.01 for every time someone listens to the song and charge the artist $.10 to stream it to a fan. Hey that does sound fair, right?
They most certainly do make money.
Do they pay their employees less money when someone works for a Cable Service company and they run a free promotion? NO. It’s chicken $hit on Tim’s part to not want to pay for this. It’s not only wrong, it’s against Federal Laws for licensing rights. These artists obviously have rights to pull content when they want to and they are electing to pull content and that’s THEIR right.
If it was really against the law do you think Apple would do it so publicly?
Right, Apple’s lawyers really slipped up this time. Hahah. You know nothing about a single aspect of any of apple’s, the labels, and artists agreements.
That comparison makes no sense. Cable companies don’t produce the content. Also, when cable companies run these promotions, most of them are done in cooperation with each channel and yes, most of them don’t get paid for the content as they understand that this is an investment that will generate new paid users.
Hmm. Just what I thought….a quick search on Spotify reveals this dudes music is also….on there! And..oh right…Spotify is basically having a 3 free month trial as well. (99 cents for premium, but lets be honest, is there that much difference between 99 cents and free). What kind of profit could these greedy artists possibly get from 99 cents per month. So let the artist community continue to attack Apple. I’m not a fanboy in the slightest, but it really irks me when people attack Apple for doing stuff that clearly, all the others do as well.
correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that Spotify continued to pay the normal price to the music labels during these three months. In essence, It’s Spotify, wich is losing money in these three months, not the music labels.
You’re misunderstanding the issue. The artists don’t have an issue with the free trial. They have an issue with not being paid royalties for their plays during the free Apple Music trial. Afaik, Spotify still pays artist their royalties during the trial. 1000 plays on Apple music during the trial gets the artist nothing. 1000 plays on Spotify gets the artist their normal rate. You’re getting irked for no reason since Apple is the only one with the stipulation to not pay artists during the free trial.
Of course music industry businessmen are concerned – a very successful music industry player is changing its business model, and everyone will need to shift. There is nothing like FUD to help in the mission of slowing down change.
Of course, no musician or business has to sign up with Apple. It is completely optional, and there may be more profitable channels to sell within. Just like any business, you need to make good decisions and weigh the pros and cons. Part of that business is to slam the competition via press releases and tweets.
However, as I said earlier, to put Taylor Swift in the same category as a minor artist is silly. Swift is a $100+ million dollar marketing machine with a song catalog tacked on her tail. I am confident the reason that Swift isn’t offering her entire catalog via iTunes is that her business is demanding a multi-million dollar premium over other artists. No one else in the industry has that kind of financial clout right now – not the Beatles, not anyone. To mention Brian Jonestown Massacre alongside Swift is downright silly – as I doubt BJM gets paid a few million just to walk into a retail store and pretend to browse and buy something while the paparazzi shoot 10,000 pictures.
Said the artists who promote their products on Twitter, which is basically a free advertising platform disguised as “social media.”
That’s Twitter’s problem for not charging people to use their service. I still can’t figure out how Twitter makes any money since they aren’t charging anyone any money.
Twitter does have embedded advertisements.
Apple are going to spend millions of dollars on infrastructure and bandwidth to support their streaming service and will carry the burden of the three month trial all by themselves. This is a money loser for Apple during that time, not a money maker.
During those three months Apple will be the salesforce trying to sell potential customers on the music. If Apple are successful, the paychecks will rain in for artists.
Anyone who complains that they’re not getting paid for the trial period has their head up their ass and can’t see the big picture. Even Newcombe, who leads for a band I quite like.
Building market share has value. Apple is not seeing the big picture… Paying royalties during the trial would have brought positive mind share to go along with the market share. If Apple is successful with the service the amount of royalties paid out during the trial months would be absolutely inconsequential.
They’re building market share for the artists and the labels first and foremost. You know, the guys who will take 71.5% of all the money that Apple brings in. They, the labels and artists, have to do literally zero work for their slice of this pie. If the artists want to be part of the program, you know, partners, then they have to put up just like Apple, the other partner.
Apple Music didn’t just build itself overnight.
Sounds like Newcombe wants to use Apple’s platform without compensating them for their work either.
Customers get to try the music for 3 months free.
Customers also get to try the service for 3 months free.
Musicians and Apple are both letting customers sample their hard work for free.
Search platforms fail if they aren’t comprehensive, they are nothing without content, content which search platforms want for free or next to free. Which is like making the minimum wage $0 dollars. This is wrong regardless of the investment in code or servers. If you can’t build a business that pays it’s costs for materials to exist you do not deserve to be in business, because you exist on the backs of others. Apple has the money to pay its bills. It is just choosing not to because it sits in a position of power. Power which it has no problem abusing. Don’t forget that they are the 1% and the rest of us are the 99% that make up the long tail of content ( and their customers ) that they need to support a service like this. The fact that they don’t want us to make money even for a second shows their true colors.
Everyone seems to overlook that the only reason we are even having this discussion is because consumers and artists clearly disagree about what their work is worth, if that weren’t the case people would still buy music. Tell me, how much does an artist get paid in royalties when people pirate their music? Spotify is the largest on demand streaming service in terms of paid subscribers and it only has about 20 million of those. I’d be willing to bet more than 20 million people pirate content regularly. Apple isn’t the one devaluing the content, consumers have already taken care of that, Apple is trying to help these creators salvage something from this, but it requires that people buy in at large scales, meaning the barrier to entry has to be virtually non existent. At the end of the day spotify with its 20 million subscribers is not profitable, this service will lose Apple money even after the subscription revenue starts to roll in. Most artists don’t make much money from recorded music, they do from live performance and merchandising so smaller artists would actually benefit more from increased exposure than they would from the fraction of a cent they will make in royalties from you or I listening. Demanding royalty payments makes sense for the labels and it makes sense for the big artists like Taylor Swift, but for it to be some claimed benefit for all artists is misinformed at best and more likely disingenuous.
Free trial or not, artists should be paid for their music. I had figured that the free trial meant we don’t pay anything because apple was subsidizing the cost of the music and subscription for us for 3 months. Apparently they are doing it by not paying the artists though, which I think shouldn’t be ignored. I definitely need to read up on this to get more info, but if this is true then as apple fans, and decent human beings we should just look away.
The artists have a choice. They could go elsewhere very simply, or they could stick with Apple, which will have double, triple, maybe four times the subscribers of any other competing service. Pretty sure that will net the artists FAR more money. Plus, you don’t even know how much the artists are getting on Apple’s compared to the competing services. Apple doesn’t have a free tier, either, so they need ample free trial period to get customers to have plenty of time to decide if it’s for them, and it’s such a long period of time that many people won’t want to give it up afterward, as opposed to a two week or month trial where you wouldn’t be so inclined to say you can no longer do without it.
The artists get 71.5%. It just so happens that 71.5% of $0 is $0. Stop trying to compare this to broadcast licensing. Apples (no pun intended) and oranges.
And sorry, by “artists” I did of course mean “the rights holders” which accounts for many more entities than the artists alone.
It might have been a big pill to swallow, but it might have been a good idea for Apple to just pay the royalties for the first 3 months of free trial out of their pockets. This way they could have gotten *everyone* on board without any reasons to complain. But I am sure they probably already thought of this, did their math, and decided it is not worth it…
Imagine how much money Apple would have to pay for that, compared to Spotify. There could be a hundred million free trial memberships to this…
At what point do you feel Apple is wrong, what if Apple wanted a 5 year free trial and not pay anyone during this time period? I would imagine if your boss said the next three months we arent going to pay you to attract new customers but feel free to get a second job somewhere else until then, you’d be like WTF?
Except that Apple are not their boss, the analogy is totally incorrect. They aren’t losing any money, just not making more of it during the trial. It’s more like your boss decides to share your work – for free – to another company for a few months, with the hope of cashing in after 3 months.
We can all cites various arguments for and against, but I think the bottom line is much simpler: Apple, being the giant that it is could, and should, afford to be much nicer with everyone, and in particular, with plain folks and non top 10 artists, who provide them with free or close to free content. I think such an improved attitude would reward them with much more mileage, and from people who are already loyal to their brand, than say, a big promotion campaign, or giving money here and there, to various causes… Their main cause should be their users, those who buy their products, and above all, those who provide them with content that keep them being the trendy brand that they are.
5 year free trial. Why did you even comment? Pointless argument and deeply impractical analogy, as Mark pointed out.
How do they calculate the royalties on FREE? Maybe you’re thinking they should just use $9.99/month per subscriber… But woah, hold on there. What about family plans? So what should anyone get paid? The fair thing to do is pay the contract percentage of all the money brought in. So let me get out a pencil and some papers and do a quick calculation… 71.5% of 0… Is, hold on a second, almost got this. Ok, done. It’s $0. Seems like the labels/artists are getting the correct amount after all.
If the artists want to be paid, maybe they should talk to their labels.
Me I think it’s simple:
I have no problem at all in Apple promoting their new streaming service with a 3-month free trial – why would anyone have a problem? However, let’s not kid ourselves, Apple’s free trial is purely a marketing device designed to get people to sign on the dotted line when the trial is over. There is no doubt at all that Apple are attracting customers to this new streaming service using the work of artists. If the artists’ music wasn’t available to listen to Apple would not attract any customers.
Nobody that I know would be willing to forgo their salary for three months. Sure, the top 5 or 10 per cent of recording artists could probably afford to suck it up but most musicians cannot, nor should they be pressurised into doing so.
People should be paid for what they do.
I agree. It looks to me that Apple is using profits to gauge their success. Steve put the happiness of his customers, the way apple is perceived and the quality of the products above profit. Funnily enough that’s what got them where they are.
Profit focused companies don’t stay at the top, we’ll see what happens in the next 10 years if this trend continues.
Are you kidding me? Apple is always focused on profit. Just because they are also focused on quality, doesn’t mean AT ALL that Steve wasn’t focused on the bottom line. How they got where they are is Steve narrowed their focus to 4 major product lines, made them INSANELY profitable, and kept the innovation going – while only buying companies that would save them time from developing from the ground up.
Steve was more interested in changing the world and leaving a dent in the universe. He had a vision for technology. Profit allowed him to continue his work. He didn’t see money as the driving factor. Watch all the interviews with Steve Jobs.
You’re absolutely correct about Steve, asmi8803. Herewegoagain7 is completely wrong.
You mean the same company that has taken on a number of environmental initiatives that don’t increase profits, that has instituted a charitable donations matching program that doesn’t increase profits, that has a CEO who has literally told investors that if they’re only concerned with ROI they can take a hike? That company?
People go to school to be a doctor or lawyer for years, and years, including internships. They are losing massive money, and not being paid during that time, but afterward they are being paid far greater than most of the population.
Artists make nothing during the free trial, but reap the massive benefits of being in Apple’s ecosystem afterward, which will have an astronomically higher number of paid subscribers, all of which are paying, as opposed to any free tier. It’s really not hard to understand why artists would be fine with this.
I think the key point is that artists need some form of compensation for that free period. Don’t forget that their download sales will plummet if people can listen for free.
Apparently not simple enough. No one is giving anything up nor forgoing anything. If Apple doesn’t get people to sign up, the labels and artists will make exactly ZERO short and long term. Right now labels and artists get to sit on their asses, do no work, lose no money while Apple spends MILLIONS and a few more MILLIONS to sign people up. Once they’re signed up, those labels and artists will then collect regular paychecks for 71.5% of everything Apple brings in. Apple gets to keep spending MILLIONS to promote and operate the service, while hopefully being able to squeeze some profit out of that 28.5% – something Spotify hasn’t been able to do yet – they continue to LOSE money.
It’s likely Apple will make nothing from streaming, but it will help make their other products better. And the labels and artists will make more money than they ever have on any other platform/medium. Seriously, it doesn’t take a university business degree to see the windfall for the artists here.
Wow The Brian Jonestown Massacre is one of my favorite bands. Anton obviously has a point. Although Apple will not profit in the three month trial period but indirectly they will because a lot of people wll get hooked to the streaming service and wil pay after the three month trial.
… as will the artist. It’s a mutually beneficial agreement.
Apple should do the right thing and still pay the artists during the free trial.
Do your part. Report Apple to the DOJ anti-trust division. Maybe we can get this Apple Music thing shut down before it opens. Evil Apple has no right to exist or make money this way.
So Evil microsoft that can never deliver a decent OS or Evil google who steals all your data they sell and pay you nothing, those companies are ok. But Apple doing a promo, yea, they’re the son of satan.
It’s an opt-in service. If the artists don’t want to join, they don’t have to.
The idea here is to build a huge audience by offering people a free trial and then having them pay for the service once the trial is over. It’s within the artist’s best interests to have as many people pay for the service as possible, so you’d think they’d be all over offering the free trial in order to get those numbers up.
There is absolutely no reason why Apple should pay the artists for this free trial. Apple are providing a platform for the artists to make money in. They are literally going to make the artists money that otherwise would have been lost to pirating or non-engagement. A free trial up front means more money for the artist down the line. And then Apple is supposed to pay the artist on top of that, for having the foresight to build a platform and offer a free trial that would make them more money in the first place?
No.
If consumers are so concerned with the artists getting paid then they should do the right thing and purchase the artist’s music and never pirate any content ever, and…nevermind way easier to place the blame elsewhere.
Music labels can’t see that you need to trade short term gain for a long term win. Just like politicians everywhere!
I can’t comment on that particular issue. But I am also very mad at Apple, for things they did about one year ago, to a series of podcats that I used to list in their free podcasts sections.
I used to maintain a free feed on the Apple music store, that’s roughly 120 podcasts of 1 hour World music shows.
Eventually, since the number of our listeners grew, we decided to add a French feed to the English one we already had in there, for more more than a year already.
You can judge by yourself how professional it was, since the website still exists: http://www.rhythms-international.com/system/index.php/en/
But, because of how poorly Apple’s podcast submission interface was built, I ended up having to pull the old feed, so I could publish both the old and the new French one.
When came time to republish my feeds Apple refused, without even giving a precise reason for the refusal. All they did was point me to a list with possible causes, and once I had removed all the technical ones, I was left with only one that basically said we had to own all the rights to the music played in our shows.
It’s not that we wouldn’t have liked to, but that it was just too complicated to.
First, just find me the guy to whom I could have paid the few cents each song playback is worth these days.
We first tried to see how we could pay those rights. But since each answer we got was different, and that we were doing that how out of our own pocket money, and never to make a profit, we thought we were ok.
Not only that, but many of the artists we featured in our shows came from far away places, where they don’t even have a government, so copyright laws…
Also since many of the artists or works we featured weren’t played on commercial radio, we checked with some of them just to see, and all of them were completely happy to have us, just broadcast their music to a new audience.
In spite of various protests to Apple, protests that were only met by more cold and vague answers, our plea was never heard.
I think we had many valid arguments, the first one being that one of the feed was exactly like a previous one they had already okayed in the past, and the other being just the same music, but with French text.
Also, it felt quite unfair to us that it was nearly impossible that each owner of each of the thousands of listed feed in their lists was in compliance with Apple’s rules…
The first reaction was that we decided to stop publishing this music for the enjoyment of others, and we now keep it to ourselves…
I doubt that the artists we used to feature are better served by that.
But also, my general reaction to how poorly we were treated by Apple, was that even though I had been an Apple fan since the Mac Plus (my friends used to call me Mr Mac), my appreciation of Apple made a 180 turn…
And it’s not like we couldn’t exists without being listed in the Apple’s podcasts lists either, but if they managed to kill a perfectly good podcasts series like ours, I can’t see how they will succeed with more and more attemtpts of the same kind of automatic selectors that people hate, since iTunes has started suggesting us music.
Sure, they will have “curators”… But it doesn’t seem to occur to Apple that there’s already plenty of “curators” out there, already happily doing that job, free of charge to them !
So wouldn’t it be simpler for them to:
have a musical fingerprinting system that figures out what music is played in podcasts like ours. At least those in their lists.
2. pay the rights on the music they spot in the feeds, on behalf of podcasts makers, who would simply be required to register and abide a few simple rules, like age appropriate content rating.
3. use this system to provide a “buy the song now in the Apple Store” button in iTunes, so people can do impulse purchase and Apple gets it’s money back, while at the same, making sure in the process, that artists and the music industry gets their fair share.
4. use that system to spot new music their system can’t tag, so they have a headstart in the newest music coming out there…
5. I would top that with a special app that I have in mind, but I think it’s enough good ideas for free for today :)
Apple doesn’t make the laws, and they have a legal responsibility to ensure their services operate within them.
It sounds like you wanted Apple to give you a considerable amount of their own time and resources to educate you on copyright law and then devise a system that would do all the legal work for you.
Apple has provided you with a platform to present your podcast to the world — which is opening up a huge door for you. But if you decide to walk through it, the burden of responsibility from there on in falls squarely on you.
Fact is that you were distributing music illegaly (as defined in current laws). Apple not lending its platform for that makes sense.
For one that issue is still not entirely decided, because many other things must also be taken into account, such as the value added to that content by the podcasters, and the value the promotional value the artists get back from these, to mention just a few.
Also, if that argument is right, and Apple shouldn’t, as you say, lend a platform to those actions, then to be fair, it should also periodically review all the other feeds they publish, to make sure they also comply with their guidelines. And not just ask, but also check.
But I prefer to believe in thinking further and see if there isn’t an overlooked business opportunity lurking somewhere.
If our intent was never to break the law, but just make a bit of fun for ourselves and our friends, while promoting artists work in the process. And if our intent is neither to steal from the artists, but instead, give them their fair due. And if there are not only thousands of people just like us, but also, technical means to turn this into a business opportunity for Apple, and the artists as well, then shouldn’t we try to achieve that instead ?
I was under the impression that it was one of the main ideas behind the iPod and the iTunes in the first place (as well as making huge profit from an new and untapped business opportunity called “MP3”), but maybe I’m wrong…
While I understand the Artist feel like they should be paid, at the same time they should understand:
1) That apple is losing money for every user who uses the free trial with the cost of streaming, hosting the music and connect.
2) This is only for a free 3 month trial period after which the user no longer has access to any tracks unless they sign up
3) Apple has 800 million credit cards of people who spend money and most likely will be the biggest pay for streaming service in a very short time.
4) Even with the 3 “free” months artists will probably end up making more money with apple music then with just itunes alone.
5) People still “steal” music, apple is hoping this will convert people to pay for music.
6) If a person does not sign up after 3 months there is still a very real possibility they will have listen to music that they have never heard before, become a fan and go ahead and purchase the album, t-shirt, concert tickets etc…remember they no longer have access to this music after 3 months.
It no way is apple “losing money”. There is absolutely a cost for marketing that is their choice. But nothing is ever “free”. If the payments from subscribers don’t exceed the cost of those subscribers streaming AND the cost of the free streaming for marketing the service than the business will either fold or be subsidized by Apples other profitable ventures. There is no free. That is a misunderstanding and/or a lie. In almost all cases, ever. Free just means someone else is paying the cost. In this case Apple is asking that the artists pay the cost during their free trial (not the artists free trial for a service they might like to launch and own), in the form of not asking for payment for the right to play their music they paid the production cost for. This is simple Apple asking artists to give them something for free so that Apple can be a success. Not so that the musicians can be a success. There are other venues that exist and might exist that respect the artists and NEVER ask for anything for free if Apple doesn’t get its way and dominate the space. The fact just happens to be that they have so many eyes captive that they can decide that they should get their marketing for free in the form of a giant music catalog that they can stream without any payments for rights. Even if that is a legal move it is a dick move. And the only way to protect against it is not for single artists to abstain but to legislate that this kind of overreaching game changing bullying from corporations in positions of power is not legal. That there is a set of licencing rules that apply always and protect the minimum revenue that MUST be paid for streaming a song. If that makes some business models not work. So be it. Without those rules the people in the long tail that get minimal plays are further financially compromised.
Exposure is a bullshit argument. Just because the search engine changes who is exposed, doesn’t mean that more people are exposed, it means that different people are exposed to different music and it actually means that each musicians pool of listeners is diluted, making it even more important that every play be appropriately valued. So that when the almighty search engine happens to surface your tune out of millions of tracks that you get paid. Payments should actually follow on inverse payment curve, where Apple pays more for low amounts of plays and less for bulk plays. That way if they want the dominate long tail music search engine they have to pay a higher percentage to the lower performing artists than they do the higher performing artists.
Exposure is not a bull shit argument here, if I go to the store and I see a CD for an artist I’ve heard before that is where my money is going and no other artists will make any money, if I am paying for streaming music there is no additional cost to me for playing a song I may never have heard before by an artist I may not have ever even heard of. In the case of Apple’s service in particular the hope is that enough people will actually sign up that the music industry as it exists today may even have a chance of remaining sustainable. Music sales are plummeting, someone has to figure out a way to get people to pay for music again and it isn’t likely to be one of the several companies currently leading the charge in on demand streaming given none of them currently make any money.
How is this different from Radio stations playing an Artists music? Free advertising. I like to own my music so if I hear something I like I buy it.
It’s not free advertising — radio stations pay royalties to the artist every time they play one of their songs. Which is exactly what Apple will do once the free trial ends. Which is why I think the free trial is a great idea because it’s designed to attract as many paying listeners as possible to support the artists once the free trial has ended.
what percentage does this guy and other artists receive from illegal file sharing? just sayin…
To the guy from the Brian Jonestown Massacre, would it be better if people used file sharing services to download your music? Because that is the next option.
Dumb clueless no talent rock musician opens mouth and inserts foot.
Get a clue.
A record deal doesn’t make you rich.
This guy sounds kind of pompous — would he rather everyone go back to the Napster days, where everybody got free music and NOBODY got paid? If you have a better model then go for it — otherwise stfu and if you don’t want to do business with Apple, then don’t do business with Apple…how much money they have is irrelevant; I’m sure this guy has more money than his average patron…
Last I checked only a handful of artists actually make money from record deals. The real money comes from concerts and merchandise sales. Having your music on as many platforms as possible helps the artists make more money by increasing ticket and merchandise sales from people discovering their music that otherwise would not.
Small artists would be smart to self produce their music to keep more of their money and keep it out of the hands of distributors and record companies.
In the end Apple Music will benefit the musicians by having the music in the hands of more people The on,y way independent artist are going to make any real money is not giving the record labels streaming rights to their music and seeking the rights directly to Apple. They are supposed to be artists not businessman.
Apple will not be making any money during the trial period. It’s a FREE TRIAL PERIOD. This is to promote the service AND the artists. This would be a win/win if these artist’s, who make millions, weren’t so greedy they can’t see beyond their bank accounts.
It is within both Apple’s and the artist’s best interests for Apple Music to gain as many users as possible. Hence the free trial. Both parties will stand to benefit greatly in the years and maybe even decades ahead of these three months thanks to the promotional offer made during these three months of a free trial. Any artist who can’t understand this and tries to fight it is just shooting themselves in the foot.
Maybe this needs to be the front lines of a new push. When we discuss employment of individuals at companies for hourly wages we talk about minimum wage. When we discuss use of a private individual or companies work product by another company people say you can just go elsewhere, and defend the idea that the transaction can happen with no compensation. So we have a double standard. One for the people that accept employment offers from others and one for everyone that chooses to be independent. It is glaring in the case of musicians because the bulk of them are very vulnerable. So we have laws, unions and representation for these people that have established what the ground rules are. That needs to stand, but I think we need more protections for anyone who creates work product that another company leverages for profit. We need to make it easier for people to independently create and profit, not harder. Unless everyone just wants to be working for top 10 companies in the future. It’s fine to have massive corporations, but as they get larger and reach the size of governments they become communist dictatorships. If we don’t use the real government to set to standards that they have to follow. Its one thing for you to get together with a few buddies to create something where no one gets paid for the promise of future revenue. It’s a completely different thing for a company with billions of dollars to leverage that same gamble and try and pretend like they are just partnering with you to make something happen. They are not, they are putting you in a marketplace with millions of other competitors at no cost to them where your wares will just get buried and will support them in the long tail by drawing your tiny fan base to give them credit for being awesome that they don’t deserve. This is the same operating principle as google. Index everything to create the ability to generate massive wealth but pretend like your individual content is effectively worthless to them. When it is the ability to find that low trafficked page that is perfect for the customer that solidifies google value and allows them to draw billions of advertising dollars. The bottom line is that if you want something in your search or audio streaming platform you should be required to pay a minimum for having it. Add those companies that can figure out how to pay for the content and monetize it should be the ones that succeed, not the ones that figure out how to trick everyone into giving it for free. That minimum should be calculated in some way similar to the calculation of a minimum wage. Would that screw up these services. Absolutely, but we need to bring back protections for authors, musicians and all creators before the massive internet companies siphon off so much wealth and life force from everyone that these companies can just buy the government with armies of lawyers and we never get back our rights and our freedom and opportunity to create.
Oh wait, it is already to late. I guess we were all too busy searching nude celebrities on google to notice.
Unfortunately that only way to combat the devaluation of content in the long tail is to legislate, if you want a long tail to bolster your internet business and make it definitive than you have to pay for that long tail if your business is profitable. In the case of apple they are using the capitol from their profitable business to invade a market already occupied by spotify so they need to pay. It should be hard for them to get in, not easier. If you are 5 guys in a garage build a music streaming service with little to no capital instead of a massive corporation it is ok for you to make some deals where no money changes hands. Think of it as progressive legislation to max progressive taxation. As a private individual makes more money they pay more in taxes. As a corporation makes more money they pay more in regulation and more in protections for the people the use to grow even bigger. So that we aren’t waiting for billionaires to buy effective monopolies. We know they are going to do it and we put the breaks on before they get there.
I for one, don’t want to be a serf in the kingdom of Apple. I want to keep as much freedom and independence as I can without being robbed of opportunity to create and do business, by Walmart, Apple, Google, etc.. Apple wouldn’t even let some apple fans play their keynote at a 3rd party apple developer convention. This is just one more way in which they are becoming out of control. I believe in capitalism and easy regulation as a means to lift people from poverty and provide them with freedom. Not as a means to borg the planet and melt down musicians to fuel a streaming service. Watch that Jupiter Rising movie and replace a planet full of people with a planet full of musicians where you melt down 10,000 of them to make one dollar. Where is the morality in that.
Wouldn’t it be cool if we could create a platform that gave people everything? Yeah that would be neat but how would the people that we got the stuff from get paid, cause we can’t pay them all. Oh right, I guess we can’t do that, but it would be really cool. Well, its really helping them if we don’t pay them, because otherwise how are they going to get found. Its probably hard for them to reach lots of people. That’s true, so if we don’t pay them anything we are really doing them a favor? Yeah that’s right!. So we just take everything from everyone and don’t pay them. But what about the people that are already being found? Won’t they get mad if we are taking their stuff for free and giving it out. Humm.. So maybe we pay those guys because they might sue us. But only if we can figure out how to make money off them. And they already have a bunch of attention so they might not even care if we give their stuff out for free so people don’t look at other less popular stuff. But what about the less popular people that we are helping people find. Well, they might have more people see them and then get more fans. But we are giving out there stuff for free so they won’t have the money to sue us like the people that already have customers. So we can just figure out the minimum number of fans that they will have before we have to worry that someone is going to notice we aren’t paying them. Well, and then they are famous right, so that’s cool for them. We really did them a favor by paying them nothing when they weren’t important. I don’t know this all feels weird. People might catch on that we are taking stuff for free. So, maybe while people are getting stuff from the people that are already popular we throw up just a bit of the unpopular stuff so that some of the people we are taking from for free can be successful. What do you mean, like a lottery? Yeah, that makes sense. And if we only pick stuff that people seem to really like when they accidentally find it, than we can say that our platform is just an opportunity and keep getting everyone’s stuff for free, because really if the stuff is crap and nobody wants it that isn’t our fault. We are doing them a favor by taking it for free. Because everyone is going to come ask us what is good now because we have everything free. They aren’t going to have to look for good stuff on their own any more. Geez. We are really doing a public service here. Oh look. Most of our traffic is coming from the 95% of content where there is only 1 or 2 people looking at this crap content. Huh. Good thing we are getting all that for free because we are really making a crap ton of money now. I’m really glad we did those people a favor and included them.
How about this analogy…. Does Netflix pay royalties/licensing fees for the content you watch when you’re on a free month trial??
That’s not a good analogy, as film and TV don’t have the same replay value as music.
if you dont like Apple’s way of business you’re more than welcome to take your business elsewhere. I dont see the problem here.
Labels don’t do anything for an artist for free either. They take a cut, however big it is. When they spend money, they’ll book it as an advance against future earnings by the artist. Artists need to think of this first 3 month period as an advance on their eventual income.
I don’t understand the problem here. As of today, none of these artists are making any money from Apple streaming, so what is another 3 months (per user) of not making money from Apple? Many of those trial customers turn into paying customers. Some customers will forgo the trial and begin paying immediately.
I currently have Spotify (paid). I will keep Spotify and trial Apple…probably until I’m comfortable, which will probably be a couple weeks of use at most (not 3 months). If after the trial I feel that it makes sense, then I’ll move my ten bucks from Spotify to Apple to unify my music and get an app off my phone. Using my situation as an example, the artist won’t lose any money from this deal with Apple.
Furthermore, I imagine that the Apple subscriber base will become much larger than the competition over time, based on brand and hardware integration alone…so the potential upside is there for them since they don’t have a free tier.
If someone told me that I can show my art in a gallery for a few months for free, which would expose me to hundreds of thousands to millions of potential customers…where do I sign again?
Now, I understand they might get some money from a Spotify free user due to advertising, but I would guess that it isn’t a massive check.
I get their complaint, but it doesn’t seem to be coming from a prudent business perspective. The abused artist standpoint doesn’t hold up when the upside is so appealing.
I might add that, chances are…these artists are making a bit of money off of iTunes purchases and Radio already…so there is income coming from Apple that has saved many of their asses from the jump.
Just remembering the documentary Dig!’ about the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols, you’ll remember words coming out of Anton’s mouth can be unpredictable and down right abrasive.
Wow, how anti-establishment.
I haven’t heard anybody mention that relatively low shelf life of most music. After three months, how much earning potential has been wrung out of a song or album? Not sure “maybe you’ll make money because of all the foot traffic” is a good enough motivation to let someone use your stuff without compensation. You can’t really loan music to someone. They hear it (consume it) or they don’t. And yeah, you can go somewhere else. But do what?
Short sighted, retarded “artists” — You play apple’s game and the money rolls in. This is a market that never existed before. I might pay for apple’s streaming service. If it didn’t exist, chances are i would never seek out these “artists'” product in the first place. So now money will be rolling in where it previously wouldn’t have been
Yet they’re so butthurt they can’t invest 3 months into the plan of the #1 mobile device manufacturer in the world.
Dumb fucks.
How does apple make money when the service is free — apple is asking artist to sign up for free, although they wont be paid (neither apple nor the artist) this will be a time when millions of users will use the service for 3 months, because it is free it will entice many new people who have never done streaming before — this means it will help promote artists — it’s a risk, but so was playing for free at different venues before they got signed…many bands do free promotional videos – McFly did them all the time — the only difference with apple is that after 3 months the artists will be getting a larger percentage than any other streaming service and they will have better promotion because it’s apple…
If these small artists don’t want to take the risk, then wait until after all the hype and miss out on the promoting period of when millions of users will be trying the service — or they could just allow for people to continue downloading their music illegally for free…
Stop complaining, and wait if you dont want to take the risk…
They should be thankful anyone is willing to listen to their music in the first place, and be glad that even if it is for a short time that they are earning some money by doing something they like…
if they don’t want to work for free, and want a more stable income – get a real job…not a hobby that pays