Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
You still don't address the fundamental point: Apple are offering an all you can eat streaming service. I can certainly imagine someone wanting to put one album onto endless repeat for hours. How do you decide if that is 'in the spirit of the law'?

Perhaps this is why Spotify offers such a low rate: in order to allow for those who game the system, because they are powerless to impose restraints on streaming.

It's not as if nobody hasn't tried to pull this stunt before.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...-to-let-artists-make-more-money-10344281.html

Especially this part - "Spotify told the BBC that it was exploring whether the app broke its terms of service, and it most likely did. The same reasoning was used to shut down a similar trick last year, when a band made a five-minute album of silence named ‘Sleepify’ that users could leave streaming to help them make money to fund a otur."

And spotify has yet to pull a profit, so it's hard to argue that their rates are "too low".
 
Artists not well known make $15.00 in a year.

Exactly, and there's a finite number of people to even listen to the music. Thats why 'top 40' was introduced, the labels could get the bulk of people to listen to/buy a small number of music and maximize profit off the sales of a few artist rather than the expense of signing many.
 
It's not as if nobody hasn't tried to pull this stunt before.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...-to-let-artists-make-more-money-10344281.html

Especially this part - "Spotify told the BBC that it was exploring whether the app broke its terms of service, and it most likely did. The same reasoning was used to shut down a similar trick last year, when a band made a five-minute album of silence named ‘Sleepify’ that users could leave streaming to help them make money to fund a otur."

And spotify has yet to pull a profit, so it's hard to argue that their rates are "too low".

That's precisely the point.

They have extremely low rates because streaming is easily abused. In turn, they still can't make a profit because most people don't pay, and advertising isn't enough to compensate.
 
That's precisely the point.

They have extremely low rates because streaming is easily abused. In turn, they still can't make a profit because most people don't pay, and advertising isn't enough to compensate.
You are confusing causation with correlation.

They have low rates because that is all they can afford to pay with the revenues they are earning. That and the terms were negotiated with labels.
 
Some bright boffin on the forums here worked out that if a listener streamed music from Apple Music for three months for 24 hours a day, it would cost Apple just over $8,000.

The market for Apple Music is 2 billion people. If everyone signed up for the three month trial and listened in like manner, it would cost Apple $16 trillion.

I'm not sure that even Apple can afford that.
 
Some bright boffin on the forums here worked out that if a listener streamed music from Apple Music for three months for 24 hours a day, it would cost Apple just over $8,000.

The market for Apple Music is 2 billion people. If everyone signed up for the three month trial and listened in like manner, it would cost Apple $16 trillion.

I'm not sure that even Apple can afford that.

I've think they have screwed up with their calculations because that works out around 36,000 songs a day. :eek:
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jmausmuc
Some bright boffin on the forums here worked out that if a listener streamed music from Apple Music for three months for 24 hours a day, it would cost Apple just over $8,000.

Not that bright! At 3 minutes per song, that is 20 songs per hour or 480 per day, so at 0.2 cents per song that is 96c per day. So roughly $1 per day of continuous listening.

But if you can trial the family plan, and run 6 streams continuously....
 
  • Like
Reactions: Benjamin Frost
Not that bright! At 3 minutes per song, that is 20 songs per hour or 480 per day, so at 0.2 cents per song that is 96c per day. So roughly $1 per day of continuous listening.

But if you can trial the family plan, and run 6 streams continuously....

If 2 billion people signed up for the family plan, it could potentially cost them just over $1 trillion.

If 2 billion people sign up to the single plan, it could potentially cost Apple $180 billion for the three month trial.
 
If 2 billion people signed up for the family plan, it could potentially cost them just over $1 trillion.

If 2 billion people sign up to the single plan, it could potentially cost Apple $180 billion for the three month trial.

And if they all clapped their hands at the same time it would make a big noise. ;)

It's not going to happen though. A handful of weirdos might engage in constant streaming in a misguided attempt to get one over Apple but there is no way 2 billion people are going to sign up for the free trial, let alone go to the bother of playing music constantly for 3 months.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Benjamin Frost
And if they all clapped their hands at the same time it would make a big noise. ;)

It's not going to happen though. A handful of weirdos might engage in constant streaming in a misguided attempt to get one over Apple but there is no way 2 billion people are going to sign up for the free trial, let alone go to the bother of playing music constantly for 3 months.

I wasn't suggesting that it would!

Just fun seeing what could hypothetically happen.

I think you knew that, though. ;)
 
Apple doesn't know? Really?

If Apple pays a fixed percentage of subscriptions, then the dollar amount per song-stream can't be known in advance because the total number of streams can't be predicted in advance, though obviously after a few months (past the free trial) they'll have a good idea.

But here in Australia we don't even know how much it will cost per month as pricing has not been released. (But for me, barring a major surprise, the family option is likely to be tough competition for Spotify, which is my current provider)
 
I think the price of albums on iTunes is too high.

Here in the UK, they are usually about £8. I think if they were generally £5, sales would rise a lot, leading to greater profit all round. The same with films.

It would also encourage people to buy an album more often, rather than individual tracks. I often just buy a few tracks because it's cheaper, but if the album only costs slightly more, I’ll be more tempted to buy it. I think the usual £1 for a track is fine.
There are different behaviors and motivations, of course. A lower price will certainly encourage some people to spend more on music than they already spend, but others will stick to the same budget, regardless - so they'll get more songs for the same money. Others will buy the same number of songs/albums they always have, and pocket the savings.

And even when a lower price temporarily stimulates sales, over the long term people tend to fall back to their regular "appetite." That happened in the years after Amazon introduced the Kindle. At first, many people reallocated their hardcover book budgets dollar for dollar, and some spent more (lower price = lower inhibitions). Eventually, most fell back to buying only as many books as they could reasonably expect to read - they found other ways to spend the savings.

I buy very little music because for me, it's a habit that once started, can be a very slippery slope. I have a very long list of music I'd like to have in my library - thousands of volumes. In my case, I'm willing to spend $9.99/month to have access to a library far larger and diverse than I'd ever be able to own. Possession isn't all that important to me.

My average spending on music is much less than $9.99/month, so the record industry will come out ahead. Others might spend more than $9.99, so the record industry loses. For most people, though, if they subscribe (whether newspaper, cable TV, health club membership) they end up spending more than they would have when buying a la carte. The psychological barrier posed by each of dozens/hundreds/thousands of buying decisions has been eliminated - we're down to a single buying decision, at the start of the subscription. After that, one must take action to stop spending, rather than take action to spend.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Benjamin Frost
Where have you gotten that part from? Because its wrong.

Sounds like you comparing the average amount of Spotify payments with the amount Apple are paying during the trial.

Which is the same as Spotify pay on their free tier.

And Apple will be paying a little more than Spotify from paying subscriber's streams.
People are forgetting that this 0.2c is only during the free trial period. If someone pays $10/month and listens to nothing but Taylor Swift's album for the entire month, I assume Taylor's label will be getting that $7+... I guess that doesn't make Apple look quite as bad though.
 
You still don't address the fundamental point: Apple are offering an all you can eat streaming service. I can certainly imagine someone wanting to put one album onto endless repeat for hours. How do you decide if that is 'in the spirit of the law'?

Perhaps this is why Spotify offers such a low rate: in order to allow for those who game the system, because they are powerless to impose restraints on streaming.
I see you post in every thread (as well as liking all anti-Apple comments). Are you a paid shill?
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.