Anton Newcombe

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 … 
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