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Apple Urging Music Labels to Stop Licensing Free Songs on Spotify and YouTube
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Not necessarily true. I have not had a cable subscription in years. I also have HBO NOW and Netflix. When I look at my monthly bill between that and the Internet.
I still pay a lot less a month than the cable subscriber, who is subjected to several channels they never watch.
Plus, for some us. TV is not that important, I could cancel both and use my Apple TV to stream live news. And not lose a wink of sleep over what I missed. I guess it comes down to, what works for one, may not work for others. Times are changing, I remember when cable TV was only $10 a month. And yes, I am getting old. #
I get the idea, but paying for a streaming music service is not the same as listening to an FM radio, but I am sure you're aware of that. If your radio allowed you to pick what you wanted to listen to down to the song level that would be great .. but obviously there is a large chasm between those two.
Then you are obviously not the target audience for services like this. If you have the music collection that's great, most of us do not and streaming services are great for us.
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If online music distribution evolves into predominantly radio + paid tier only streaming, this is a good thing for the music industry at large.
There is much information on the net about how Spotify royalties work and unfortunately they favour the superstar artists. Basically it's the same 1% vs the 99% theme that plagues the general public and wealth distribution.
This is one aspect where it falls apart for the non-superstar musician, which are 99% of the musicians trying to make their living:
Spotify divvys up all income to artists based on total plays - all income includes ad income plus paid subscriber income; all plays include ad supported and subscriber plays.
Guess which brings in a much greater $ number per play? It's subscriber income.
Guess which listeners listen more to the superstar artists? It's the non paying listeners aka the ad supported.
This means that you could be a subscriber and listen 100% to your favorite artist all month (who happens to NOT be a superstar like Beyonce) but they could get paid only a few cents of your $9.99 subscription fee for the month. Who is getting the rest of your $9.something that you paid that month? You guessed it, Beyonce and co, the ones with all the subscribers listening for free.
So, Spotify free is ****ing it up for much of the non-superstar artists in it's current incarnation.
We must remember that the superstars are extremely far and few between. That Beyonce can afford to travel in a private jet is laughable to use as a justification to not pay for consuming music. Also ridiculous is the statement that the artist can sell their merch on tour to pay their bills...there are many more support people involved in making music other than artists. Engineers, producers, session players, arrangers, writers etc... These people make their living in the RECORDING industry, not the touring or merch industry.
Greats like, Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin made more than 10 albums each before they hit their artistic peak. And then alot of people wonder why music content has headed downhill. If there's no opportunity for artist development, like any industry with no development, it will turn to ****.
There is much information on the net about how Spotify royalties work and unfortunately they favour the superstar artists. Basically it's the same 1% vs the 99% theme that plagues the general public and wealth distribution.
This is one aspect where it falls apart for the non-superstar musician, which are 99% of the musicians trying to make their living:
Spotify divvys up all income to artists based on total plays - all income includes ad income plus paid subscriber income; all plays include ad supported and subscriber plays.
Guess which brings in a much greater $ number per play? It's subscriber income.
Guess which listeners listen more to the superstar artists? It's the non paying listeners aka the ad supported.
This means that you could be a subscriber and listen 100% to your favorite artist all month (who happens to NOT be a superstar like Beyonce) but they could get paid only a few cents of your $9.99 subscription fee for the month. Who is getting the rest of your $9.something that you paid that month? You guessed it, Beyonce and co, the ones with all the subscribers listening for free.
So, Spotify free is ****ing it up for much of the non-superstar artists in it's current incarnation.
We must remember that the superstars are extremely far and few between. That Beyonce can afford to travel in a private jet is laughable to use as a justification to not pay for consuming music. Also ridiculous is the statement that the artist can sell their merch on tour to pay their bills...there are many more support people involved in making music other than artists. Engineers, producers, session players, arrangers, writers etc... These people make their living in the RECORDING industry, not the touring or merch industry.
Greats like, Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin made more than 10 albums each before they hit their artistic peak. And then alot of people wonder why music content has headed downhill. If there's no opportunity for artist development, like any industry with no development, it will turn to ****.
Of course iTunes revenue dropped post Spotify. It got a competitor. iTunes revenue isn't the same as music business revenue. The musicians don't just make money off of iTunes, they also make money off of Spotify. If the total revenue is the same, factoring in all players, the business is stable. You don't just look at one competitor. The phone business didn't shrink either when Samsung took over iPhone's lead. It just got distributed differently between the players.
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I strongly support you on that one though
Furthermore, ads is the same as paying for something. When you listen to your radio, you are indeed paying for it. You're just paying through ads. They have to pay to use the songs, and the people in the studios have to get paid, so of course there's money there. It's the same with strong services. There's money there. As long as the ads produce enough of a profit to sustain the industry that's brilliant. If they don't, different business models will naturally take over again. It's simple.
Yeah and that's why the DOJ is getting involved. Like Apple said they would pay for all music licensing from YouTube. That sounds very strange to me.
How can you say this isn't something Apple will ever do when there are already reports that Apple has done exactly this?
I recommend you try to take your fanboy goggles off and try to look at this rationally. Spotify is the undisputed king of streaming. They're a giant and it will take a lot for Apple to dislodge them. Apple is trying to help themselves by abusing their power.
This is not a good thing.
If the DOJ follows through and does something about it, I hope the board of directors decide to remove Cook from CEO since he's a " hot potato " and could make the company look bad in the process.
After all, the music industry execs pointed fingers and named him. He can't pass the blame to Cue and crew or play innocent in a " I don't recall " attitude. The smart thing the BoD can do is get him to step down. They don't have a choice because they need someone who's as sharp as Satya Nadella to get it back on the right track.
I think it time to be vocal about what Apple isdoing and let the DOJ know as customers. I know the DOJ already knows but we need to keep presser on the DOJ on this matter. is there a web site we can petition or something?
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I guess E-book scandal doesn't ring a bell, eh?
Excuse me, but saying this is a bit like saying you want everything at the buffet for free because you could never live with what's in your refrigerator. Artists pay a lot of money to get their misusing to you - I am one, so I'm painfully familiar with all the costs. Recording costs, mastering costs, distribution costs, etc. I don't have a big record company behind me. Music is not free to create, so consumers should not expect that it should be free to consume. This not Apple being "greedy". This is Apple trying to change a market where the sole product has become valueless in the eye of the consumer. If you like the music you're currently listening to for free, please buy it.
Nice argument. Most TV on network is crap nowadays. Netflix and HBO both pump amazing original content and also have a great catalog of nonoriginal.
Enjoy paying to watch ads and for the 90% of channels you will never watch.
Dude, please stop!
This has to be the lamest spin possible.
Before Apple rigged the ebook market, I used to buy ebooks from a variety of smaller retailers, many cheaper than Amazon. Amazon had loss leaders, but it did not discount most titles and this is where smaller retailers were able to compete. There were price comparison engines, so when I wanted a title, I searched for it bought it, often from a small retailer.
Apple destroyed the market, because there was no reason to search for prices any longer, and most small retailers went broke. There was even an open letter from one of the medium size ebook sellers, explaining the reasons they went broke and blaming the collusion orchestrated by Apple. You are aware that Apple and the publishers settled this and paid fines, right?
And I am really curious why you don't list at least a few of the "lot of reasons why eliminating the free offering is good for consumers?"
Don't embarrass yourself.
1. Yes You are cheap
2. You may not be paying for FM radio, however if you hear about a special deal on hardware goods in your local walmart on a radio ad, you ARE paying for that music indirectly by listening to those (frequent!) adverts.
I would ask if you would be willing to stream free music from spotify/apple etc if these services had just as many annoying adverts as FM radio which would allow spotify/apple/whoever to pay their artists the same amount per play that they would get from FM radio on a free streaming on-demand service ?
The hundreds of adverts on those stations pay afford to pay artists far more per play more than the .007¢ per play that they are getting from Spotify.
I agree that could push people to Youtube, which in fact would be a fine platform for streaming, but only so long as the artists are the ones who eventually get their paycheck from the adverts that youtube places before playing a track (something many are already doing!)
Streaming / freemium / subscription music services are STILL very much in their infancy and their is a fine line between screwing artists and pushing the entire public back to the wild Napster days where it was a goddam mess. But if the worlds music listening public wants free, then they should be willing to indirectly accept the inconvenience of more interruptions via more ad breaks, or have to pay to have that inconvenience removed.
Personally I can see the possibility of something like a 1¢ per month track "rental" system working better for all parties involved, which would stream / cache 1000 tracks a month for 10 bucks - which is ALOT of music to be able to access anytime you want and at a reasonable rate for the end user.
IMHO the only long term solutions to on-demand free streaming services is to increase their revenue by the use of targeted advertising and as much advertising as terrestrial radio.
If you can produce a track that warrants 1 million on-demand plays you should be able to afford a little more than a mac mini when its all over.
I honestly don't believe freemium services are dead, BUT I do believe that a 10 second advert every 30 minutes is ridiculous. That un-tapped targeted advertising revenue stream has barely been touched.
I should also mention the only advert I have heard on Spotify free lately is advertising for Spotify premium - shouldn't they be at least trying to sell me something else ? (Living in Asia right now)
So keep your 25k old songs just don't buy any new ones and pay $5 a month lol.
Pardon my ignorance, but my impression is that there are quite a few eBook apps on the App Store, for example Kobo.
Decent Artists / Authors / software pull their content be used on freemium services due to the lack of royalties compared to Purchase or ubscription services.
Or
Adverts increase to the point of annoying to allow free content to continue and still remain profitable under that model.
Or
The quality of decent work gets diluted to offset the revenue differences while the volume of sub-standard "free" work increases and becomes impossible to sift though (we see this already in many industries).
To those who think beats was a crap purchase, they not only bought what is currently one of the most successful (crap but successful) audio brand names, they also bought a working subscription music service, access to a large music catalogue and what was worth probably more that all that if it works, they also "bought" 2 well respected Music industry professionals who have been in the Business as both artist and label management for years which puts them in a pretty unique position to negotiate deals such as these.
Yeah, really. Must be a cable company employee, lol. We have MORE to watch now than we ever did with stupid cable. Over the last ten years of being cord free, we've saved literally thousands and thousands of dollars.
Roof antenna, blu Ray library, and a few streaming services take care of things. Let the cable crack addicts keep paying $120 a month to watch ESPN. ENJOY!
Almost nothing you said is true.
The smaller middlemen died when the iPad happened. They were unable to offer IAP, so they died.
No problem
Apps are different than ebook resellers. Many apps, like Kobo, Kindle and Nook, are provided by hardware manufacturers.
Many, if not most of the small ebook etailers, which are not hardware manufacturers, disappeared after the collusion orchestrated by Apple.
A key reason was that if there was no difference in price, there was no reason for consumers to go out of the ecosystem of whatever ereader they had.
The prices have never come down to levels before Apple distorted the market and there are far fewer ebook sellers nowadays.
BTW, Kobo is a Canadian ereader manufacturer, owned by Rakuten. which is the largest Japanese ecommerce company.
Well, my country law says I OWN a reproduction, not a revocable licence. I also pay a "piracy tax" included in pretty much every electronic device, despite not pirating anything, and my workplace has to pay a fee for playing "free" FM radio.
All those greedy corpos and labels can go **** themselves. I'm already paying them for NOTHING.
The smaller ebook sellers died when Apple colluded with the five big publishers and ensured that there was no longer price competition, thus no reason for consumers to shop outside of their hardware ecosystem.
Apple does not like to compete on price, so they use their size to distort the market.
Apple is trying to do the same with music. I hope they fail, or the consumers will suffer.