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Music The Almighty Buck Apple

Taylor Swift: Apple's Disdain For Royalties Is 'Shocking, Disappointing' 368

Posted by timothy from the oh-the-humanity dept.
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.
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Taylor Swift: Apple's Disdain For Royalties Is 'Shocking, Disappointing' More

Taylor Swift: Apple's Disdain For Royalties Is 'Shocking, Disappointing'

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  • that's funny... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21, 2015 @10:28AM (#49956411)

    "shocking, disappointing" are the most common words I've heard use to describe Taylor Swift's music.

    • Horray for Taylor Swift. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @10:49AM (#49956551) Homepage

      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.

      • Re: Horray for Taylor Swift. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Fwipp ( 1473271 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @10:57AM (#49956611)

        If you're interested in reading a bit more of her rationale, she posted her announcement on her tumblr page, here: http://taylorswift.tumblr.com/... [tumblr.com]

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Three months is a long time to go unpaid,

          What silliness. The three months applies to individual users, not individual artists. She is greedily avoiding what her record label handlers negotiated with Apple by joining three months late after the big herd of new users.

          It is unfair to ask anyone to work for nothing.

          Possibly the deal is unfair because these big deals are negotiated by assholes based on monopsony power.

          But, this again? No you do not have a "right to be paid for your work." You cannot go dig ditches, fill them in, and say, "somebody pay me." This type of argument takes advantage

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by zr ( 19885 )

        quite frankly i don't understand what it means for a public company to be "generous". give away investors' money? i dont think so.. thats your and my retirement money.

        i'd much rather apple (or anyone else) be successful in creating a revenue-producing platform for artists than be "generous". if that takes a three months wait, well, so be it.

        so far from the artist's perspective (who is not Taylor Swift) there is no platform like this.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Bing Tsher E ( 943915 )

          There are plenty of other revenue producing platforms than Apple's scheme. It's ridiculous to buy into the Apple Hype.

          There is no reason at all that Apple shouldn't pay 'promotional costs' for using musical artists as their sales inducement. The same royalties should go to the artists before and after the promotion period.

          With regard to 'investors'- fuck off. Your 'investment' doesn't entitle you to spoils from Apple's rip-off of content providers. Maybe you should be clamoring for some fucking dividends

      • Problem is (Score:5, Informative)

        by Runaway1956 ( 1322357 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @12:15PM (#49956999) Homepage Journal

        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.

      • But Apple pays more later (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        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.

      • Free trial periods are fairly common and standard though; not just for internet services but in everything from telecoms to consumer products ("If you're not completely satisfied in 30-days return it for a full refund") to drug dealers. Some states even have a "cooling off period" where you are able to return a new car for a full refund within a certain period of time. So why is Taylor Swift, or anyone else, singling out Apple; besides the standard-issue irrational BS dating all the way back to "what kind

  • Apple Should Pay - It's Advertising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pubwvj ( 1045960 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @10:32AM (#49956433)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It all comes down to money. Apple wants more money and thinks that they can get away with not paying the singers. The singers want to make more money and think that Apple should charge its customers on their behalf.

      Bottom line - Apple is within its rights to ask singers to give away their music for Apple's benefit, and the singers are within their rights to decline that offer. There is nothing shocking going on here - its just business as usual (with everyone trying to make more money from someone else).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

        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. It's one thing to give out free introductory samples of, say, nachos expecting that to drum up more customers who will be hungry for them next week. But in this case the performers being asked to give away their product are giving away something that's time-limited for them. Sure, Apple will still have more music to sell 3 months f

        • 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)?

          • Let's assume that 30% of all revenue is being cashed in the first 3 months. The rest of 70% is spread over the 94 years and 9 months of copyright remaining. The artist gets the thick of it in the first 3 months and then everything else it trickling down as crumbles.
            Labels are greedy and can wait. An artist might not be able to wait that long, let alone still be alive 50 years from now.

      • It all comes down to money. Apple wants more money and thinks that they can get away with not paying the singers

        So Apple is like every major record label in the last sixty years.

      • It's not that musicians want Apple to charge customers on their behalf, it's that musicians want Apple to pay them for Apple using their music, whatever Apple wants to do with it. There is a big difference between the two.

    • I am not sure what she is whining about, the RIAA members give very little money to the artists, using the term artist very loosely as it rarely describes RIAA acts, especially bland, uninspired crap like Taylor Swift.

      Many acts are in debt to a major label even after a moderately successful album.

      She should be used to getting reamed without lube.

  • This is just the sort of disruptive paradigm that all business should follow.
    We're opening a new store, to get it established you're going to give away your stuff through us.

  • Swift (Score:5, Funny)

    by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @10:40AM (#49956489) Homepage Journal

    After all that effort Apple made promoting Swift [wikipedia.org], this is how she treats them?

  • "generous?" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mr.dreadful ( 758768 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @10:41AM (#49956507)
    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....
    • I don't know, a cup of tea _and_ a biscuit when they wake their Chinese employees up at 3 in the morning for an 18 hour shift to accommodate another one of Steve Job's last minute whims? Seems pretty generous by today's standards.

      • Is it a whole biscuit? That is what the hordes of Indian sub-contractors beating down that particular door want to know. Personally I would want to know if they had negotiated hobnobs in their contract, or were stuck with rich tea.

    • 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....

      It's just capitalism inaction, the maximization of profit. Isn't that the American way? Offer artists something totally unacceptable and make them laboriously negotiate you up to something a little bit above the least they will settle for. If you have ever tried to sell something you'll recognize the tactic, you ask 20 grand buyer offers 8 grand and eventually you settle on 14. The only reason this is news is because it's Apple that's doing it and everybody around here hates Apple. Poor oppressed artists vs

  • As always (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Sunday June 21, 2015 @10:41AM (#49956509)

    " 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?

    • Maybe start a Kickstarter program to get all of you folks on 12 inch 80 x 25 monitors on to something more current?

      Yes, I think putting the ambiguous icon on the right hand side of the screen is dumb, but I can read the entire headline (and the summary and, if the editor provides a link, TFA but that's only for special occasions).

  • So, where's she getting money? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <voyager529@yahoo. c o m> on Sunday June 21, 2015 @10:43AM (#49956525)

    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?

    • Re:So, where's she getting money? (Score:5, Informative)

      by sribe ( 304414 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @10:50AM (#49956561)

      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?

      Unless she has a super-special deal (which, who knows, with her market power she might), she makes way more off touring and related merchandising than she does the pitiful royalties from album (both physical & virtual) sales.

      • Unless she has a super-special deal (which, who knows, with her market power she might), she makes way more off touring and related merchandising than she does the pitiful royalties from album (both physical & virtual) sales.

        Of course, that also means that iTunes is more like a shared marketing agreement, and by making it more difficult for less successful artists to make an attractive deal with Apple for their own marketing, she actually is proposing to hurt them.

    • I didn't read her post on tumbler but from the article I read she wasn't pulling her music from iTunes. She's just keeping it out of Apple Music which is their new streaming service. She's still selling music through plenty of other storefronts, brick and mortar as well as digital. Not that she would likely miss 3 months of income very much.

  • You'd think that someone worth a couple hundred million dollars would be able to launch their own pay-per-download site for their music and cut out the middlemen.

    • This is a really interesting idea. I don't expect any single artist to do this as they investment of time and effort requires serious dedication. If artists wanted to be business people then they would not have become artist.

      However if you could get maybe half of the top 20 artist to agree that it was in the best interest of the themselves and artists in general, they could pull there music form all the other services and form a new non-profit service (non-profit for the service no the artist). The top arti

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

        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?

    • When Garth Brooks did that, it was called GhostTunes. But his complaint was more about selling singles separate from the "context" of the album.

  • If you are running a startup, you would love a service that offers 3 month free trials with decent conversion rate. It would be easy enough to get a bank loan and cover expenses while subscriptions ramp up, so long as you can document your likely monthly profits afterwards.

    Now it could well be that most musicians would rather be paid a salary than depending on fluctuating royalties. But the likes of Taylor Swift would actually be strongly against that. When you are on a salary and become a megahit, you woul

  • Great PR team (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @11:23AM (#49956749)

    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.

  • Tim Cook will step in (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kencurry ( 471519 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @11:47AM (#49956865)
    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.

  • Apple can do no wrong. Just get used to it---unless you have more lawyers than they do.

  • On the one hand, Apple oughtta just suck up the 3 months as product/service investment and still make the royalty payouts, but the reality is that, given their track record, I'd be cheering for them as an artist as Apple's success would eventually be better for me in the long run anyway.

    The *real* reality is that no artists makes any real money off physical album sales, downloads or streaming except the rare mega-acts like Metallica, U2, and presumably TS which the RIAA treat as loss-leaders, so Apple payi
    • for clarity, I guess RIAA doesn't treat mega acts as loss leaders, rather, the individual label treats the artist(s) as a loss leader

  • Meh (take 2) (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 )

    Well, looks like /. ate and posted an incomplete post of mine. I guess I won't try writing any posts from my phone in the future, if their UI is going to be this crappy. Let's try again, with a few revisions:

    I think she's calling for a bit too much out of Apple.

    Apple is a hardware company; any products or services they offer other than hardware are only relevant to them because they think it'll help them sell hardware. Apple also has a justified complex regarding self-sufficiency. More on that presently.

    W

  • I will never buy from Apple and will never develop for Apple platforms.

  • sue for misuse of trademark (Score:5, Funny)

    by NostalgiaForInfinity ( 4001831 ) on Sunday June 21, 2015 @12:27PM (#49957055)

    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 [macspeedzone.com].

  • ... did the poor artists on Apple's music service sign something which allows Apple to distribute their music for free? Are new artists STILL giving away the rights to their own music? Has nothing been learned in the past 10-20 years? Or can these small labels & artists sue the living shit out of Apple over this?

    • I'm sure they are free to cancel their contract with Apple any time. Of course, Taylor Swift wouldn't even exist without iTunes, so she is reluctant to do that. And the fact that Apple is in this bargaining position is really the result of choices that artists made earlier, namely signing up with Apple rather than signing up with a larger variety of companies.

      The correct thing to do would be for people like Taylor Swift to cancel their contracts with Apple and sign up with other music services. That would e

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