Apple Asking Music Labels to Cut Prices on Music Streaming Subscriptions

[flat five]

Am I the only person who loves beats music & thinks the 10 dollars a month I currently pay is worth it?

i subscribe.. beats is great.

just that i think we're way in the minority.. for instance, not a single one of my friends subscribes to a music service even though they're definitely music fans and are capable of paying 10/month..

3.99/month or 39.99/year would bring in much more people (disclaimer-- this is a guess)

 

[malexandria]

You underestimate the work, skill and money needed to successfully record and launch an artist. You may be a great artist, but suck at the administrative part, having someone taking care of that for you enables you to concentrate on exactly what you are good at.

Not to mention all the established relationships with venues, radio stations, press, marketing, etc.... There's a reason despite the hype there aren't that many "YouTube" SUPER STARS, Yeah you'll get the occasional Macklemore who will break through AND remain independents, but more often than not YouTube will launch someone and it's a record label that takes them to the point where they make money.

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Artists make the majority of their money on tours, secondly merchandising, ad campaigns (perfumes, commercials, food) etc.

And you think that justifies you being a ***** THEIF? Wow....

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Serious question, not snark.

What's stopping Apple from charging less for Beats Music right now?

Because the way this looks to me is pretty crappy and greedy as hell.

Snark starts now.

to Music Labels: "Hey buds, can you do us a favor and lower your prices?"

ML to : "Uhhh, whaaaa? Why would we do that?"

to ML: "Oh we want to maintain our absurdly high profit margin. If you lower your profit, you can pay artists less too. That way you break even. We, on the other hand, look like a hero to our users since we got the subscription cost lowered for our Beats Music. Since you'll be lowering our cost we can still maintain our lovely, lovely margins. In the end, don't we all want to see us continue to add to the obscene stockpile of cash we have?

ML to : "You do realize the only party that benefits from this is you, right?

:

Love them or hate them, this is exactly why Film, Cable Companies, TV etc. won't play ball with Apple. They watched how the Record Industry essentially "gave the farm" to Apple back in the day and are now stuck with iTunes. Hollywood/Movie/Cable people aren't so quick to go down that same path. Their business model works very well, so they don't have to suck up to Apple or any company. I mean it costs hundreds of millions to make a movie these days, the suits have it rigged so that even if it fails at the box office the rights were already pre-sold before the idea was even in someone's brains. Movie syndication deals are based on packages - "we'll give you the rights to air 3 Blockbusters, 2 tentpoles and a Midrange 'Hit' for $500 million dollars."

 

[AppleScruff1]

I can't imagine why the labels don't want to lower their prices so Apple can take over the streaming market too. But I guess all that matters is that Apple makes money and puts all the competition out of business. I know as a consumer that is what is most important to me.


sarcasm intended.

 

[zunairryk]

Good job Apple. Hopefully they can bring the price down significantly. However, until carriers stop ripping us off with limited data plans there is no point in such a service for me.

Now if Apple can make a deal with carriers and have the Beats app not count towards our data usage, then we are talking

 

[TechZeke]

Honestly, most streaming services are already only paying artists just more than 1 penny a play... That means you as a listener would have to listen to that song 70 times to give the artist even close to the 70 cents they make on 99 cent download today.

Take a look at your iTunes play count for the most popular song in your library and you'll get a good idea of why this is bad for the artists... and ultimately the Listener and Apple (if they aren't paying artists well).

I know many artists who are starting to shun the streaming model for services such as BandCamp and are ultimately making more money because of it...

Apple, please don't undercut artists. Pay them what they are worth and value the arts.

Sadly, this was going to happen either way.

1) Everyone has a smartphone, no need for a 160GB iPod
2) Media file size has only increased, but with the switch to SSDs the storage decreased(by allot)
3) Couple 1 and 2 with modern, cheap LTE-Speed data and paying a flat-rate to not only listen to music you already like, but makes it super easy to discover new music and there was no way streaming could NOT take off.

Also, putting a value on music is also hard to determine to begin with. What determines if a song is 69 cents or $1.29? Before, if liked 1 song on an album you had to buy the whole album. iTunes comes along and now all of a sudden we have to quantify the value of individual songs.

 

[befrank4444]

Oh no.
I'm a musician and as a musician, this rubs me the wrong way.
Try another plan Apple. You're smart. There are other ways.

 

[kmj2318]

Anyone who can't afford to pay $10 lousy dollars a month for an an "unlimited" amount of music, isn't a fan at all and just someone who is likely stealing it anyway. So basically Apple wants to try and bully the labels and get artists to work for slave wages so they can take their high markups? AIN'T GOING TO HAPPEN. NOR SHOULD IT.

$5 a month is completely unreasonable. If you don't want to pay a fare price, don't listen. You aren't entitled to music.

And you think that justifies you being a ***** THEIF? Wow....

I'm intersted in what your relationship with the music industry is.

 

[westrock2000]

Hey I downloaded Def Leppard. Only because you can't buy or stream their older stuff online. I think they're one of the few holdouts (along with Garth Brooks).

There is also the band Tool. Which I kind of get in there instance because their cover art is pretty over the top, so I think they want you to experience the jewel case itself. But regardless I ended up buying their albums used locally so they ended up getting nothing from me in the end.

Another weird one I found is the 1990's band Lightning Seeds, in particular their big hit "Pure". You cannot get this online. You can get the album it came off of, but not that song. Even the greatest hits album that's available on iTunes specificially has that song missing....however iTunes Australia does have it. Must be a licensing dispute like the movie Blade Runner.

 

[H2SO4]

What about this headline;

PCWorld asking Apple to cut prices on hardware to offer customers better deal?

 

[mantan]

It's amazing how we as consumers look completely differently at how we purchase entertainment content.

If you went back to 1994 and told people they could get thousands of movies sent directly to their TV for $9.99 a month and music for $9.99 or less a month it would be impossible. We were still paying $15 a CD and $3.99 to rent a single movie. Now we balk at paying that much for anything.

I do agree it's a crap move by Apple though. Their profit margins are ridiculous. Beats is reasonably priced...trying to squeeze artists to increase their own profit margin and likely selling it off as doing something for their customers is such an Apple move.

 

[mdlooker]

They shoulda lowered the prices of those damn powerbeats wireless headphones!!

 

[iososx]

pathetic.....

You're absolutely right.

The richest company wants a break, this after Napster all but ruined the business.

At every turn, Apple's greed grows. Now watch as some brilliant apologist comes along and says "but that's what corporations are supposed to do"... Duh

 

[winston1236]

It's pretty sad the economy is so terrible that people think ten dollars a month is too much for almost every song you can imagine.

 

[Liquorpuki]

Look at Apple, trying to turn everything they don't profit from into a commodity

Meanwhile their hardware stays expensive as hell

 

[powers74]

I bet there's a lot of going on inside Apple at this news...

 

[Carlanga]

It's sad for the artists, but record sales profits have all but vanished, and concerts is where most of their money is made nowadays.

Even in the old days cd was for the label and concerts were for the musicians to make the money. Between videos, $ to start tours etc the label always gets most of the cd money.

 

[flat five]

It's amazing how we as consumers look completely differently at how we purchase entertainment content.

If you went back to 1994 and told people they could get thousands of movies sent directly to their TV for $9.99 a month and music for $9.99 or less a month it would be impossible. We were still paying $15 a CD and $3.99 to rent a single movie. Now we balk at paying that much for anything.

we're paying.. don't worry.
say 20yrs ago, a typical music/movie fan could buy 2cds-rent 4 movies-see a show-and go to the movies per month.. or around $80/month to spend on stuff like that..

nowadays, it's $100 for phone service and $50 for internet every month.. the content consuming budget is already doubled just for the infrastructure then on top of that, we buy the content..

my main point is that i don't think the comparison to 1994 pricing is valid.. i spend a lot more money on music today than i did back then.. the money just goes to other people is all.

 

[69Mustang]

They aren't the ones paying the artists. The label is in charge of that. Apple is just trying to justify the cost of lowering the subscription to win over users from Spotify and Rdio.

So the label is the real bad guy here.

I was hoping you meant this and not this but your further quotes quashed my hopes.

Well they make their money on hardware so I'd prefer the higher prices instead of selling my information like Google just to hit a lower price point.

And if you were talking about the price of content in the iTunes store, it is set by the studios/publishers.

While the majority of Apple's revenue is generated from hardware a significant portion comes from iTunes and the App Store and Apple wants more from these revenue streams. More importantly Apple doesn't need concessions. They just want them. What does Google have to do with the topic? Deflective arguments are usually a sign of weak topic points.

"We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners – like publishers, advertisers or connected sites. For example, we may share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services."

If they didn't collect your data and sell it, how would they make money?

https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/

1. You don't know what the bolded portion of your comment means do you?

2. You don't know what Google's actual business model is do you?

3. I just ate a strawberry Pop Tart and that violates my diet. Don't tell my wife.

 

[ChrisA]

the race to the bottom accelerates. its a wonder anyone even tries to make a living on music anymore.

You can still earn a living.

What's changed is that you can no longer sing a song once in a studio then sell 1,000,000 copies of that one recording.

I think centuries from now they will say that recorded music was a freak of the 20th century. Only in that century would people actually pay for a recorded song. In all centuries before and all that followed musicians made their living by playing live music to people they could see.

The price of recorded music is going to be nearly zero eventually. But NO BIG DEAL for thousands of years there was no recording technology but there were even MORE MUSICIANS.

It was the birth of recording studios that killed the ability of most musicians to earn a living because records were cheaper. The recording industry put a lot of bands out of work.

 

[subsonix]

You can still earn a living.

What's changed is that you can no longer sing a song once in a studio then sell 1,000,000 copies of that one recording.

I suppose you live of your music then, how many artists do you think sell 1 million copies.

I think centuries from now they will say that recorded music was a freak of the 20th century. Only in that century would people actually pay for a recorded song. In all centuries before and all that followed musicians made their living by playing live music to people they could see.

The price of recorded music is going to be nearly zero eventually. But NO BIG DEAL for thousands of years there was no recording technology but there were even MORE MUSICIANS.

This is a ridiculous argument, in all centuries before, there were no gramophone and no way to record music. If the opportunity had existed I'm sure people would think it was amazing. Wow, you can actually hear the music without the musician being here!! It's magic! We can listen to it when ever we want, we don't need to travel, pay entrance and being in a public environment, we can listen to it at home, amazing! It's like having a private concert in my own home!

Also, in past centuries there was a lot of other thing occurring that would not be acceptable today. I mean we can certainly skip this whole electricity thing, I mean centuries ago they didn't have electricity, they used candles and a fire place, that's actually the natural thing we should expect.

It was the birth of recording studios that killed the ability of most musicians to earn a living because records were cheaper. The recording industry put a lot of bands out of work.

lol

 

[ChrisA]

....and then the quality of the music available would decrease. Kinda like what Amazon is doing with books. And I don’t support that.

Because of Amazon MORE people are reading and MORE authors are finding readers.

What I HOPE will happen to the music industry is that we stop having big name stars and we start hearing more local talent, more innovative acts.

When music depends on big labels spending tons of money the labels reduce risk by going with "safe" artists that they know will sell. But if it costs nearly nothing to make a recording then they can afford some risk. When bands can make their OWN recording and self-publish their work then we will see some real innovation and new sounds.

That said, what has really killed the music industry is video. In the 60's or even 80's no one cared what an artist looked like or what costumes they wore. (OK some exceptions.) People MOSTLY LISTENED to music. But now few people care about the audio they WATCH the acts on Youtube. It's the video that sells the audio. Do you really think 12 ba-zillion 13 year old girls would be One Direction fans if they didn't have five cute guys on camera? Would they care one hoot about the music if not for the video? I could say the say for most other top 40 performers.

 

[Aloft085]

Lower the prices and get more total subscribers. It should work out.

 

[iolinux333]

I am deluged with free streaming music - I'm so swamped with free music that while I was initially thrilled and fascinated, I'm now overwhelmed and even getting tired of it. Songza has superior 100%free, curated, and commercial free lists than Beats ever did and Google just bought them for more than 100x less the price than stupid Apple bought Beats for. There are dozens and dozens of free streaming music apps and other sources out there.


I'm sorry but people that pay for streaming music these days are not very bright and free commercial free streaming music is never going to go away. Companies thinking they're going to make a profit off of buying one of the streaming apps have idiots running the company (this is becoming quite obvious at Apple) - unless they pull a Google, who bought Songza to collect more data, not to sell music. Pirated music will never go away either.


If a musician wants to get paid, they're gonna have to go back to the old fashioned way, the way it was for 1000s of years, except for the 20th century which was a weird aberration: They are going to have to draw a crowd, and they are going to have to PERFORM well enough that people will buy tickets, or at least give them food.

 

[subsonix]

I'm sorry but people that pay for streaming music these days are not very bright and free commercial free streaming music is never going to go away.

Perhaps you missed this, it was posted earlier in the thread. http://www.businessweek.com/article...-the-streaming-music-industry-cant-make-money

If a musician wants to get paid, they're gonna have to go back to the old fashioned way, the way it was for 1000s of years, except for the 20th century which was a weird aberration: They are going to have to draw a crowd, and they are going to have to PERFORM well enough that people will buy tickets, or at least give them food.

Look. Recorded music provides a value, if it wasn't no one would listen to it and only go to concerts. Since it does provide a value, why should it be free. What is happening is that the artists just aren't getting paid, it's not that recorded music inherently lacks value. It's interesting to see people bash record label for being greedy and cheating the artist, while at the same time doing the same, only worse.

 

[macUser2007]

Spotify > anything Apple would ever try to make.

Spotify has more covers, less original artists, which makes for a poorer catalog, IMO than MOG (now Beats).

But Beats killed MOG's Artist Radio, which was kind of like Pandora.

Since I prepaid for Beats for a year, based on my love for MOG, now I am stuck with no Artist Radio and instead have to do with some lame playlists, or the absolutely lamest Sentence, which Beats thinks is so great (it sucks).

As a result, I listen to Beats a lot less than I used to listen to MOG, so when it's time to renew, I'll probably settle for Spotify