Apple Yet to Contact Indie Publishers for Apple Music Streaming Rights

[Benjamin Frost]

Yes you are not getting paid during the trial, but neither is Apple who is paying for the servers, storage, and streaming bandwidth of the songs.

So you believe Apple should pay artists during the initial 3 months when it is not making anything on the service?

Or do you believe Apple needs to scrap the trial and just force people to pay up front with no trial?

What would you propose is a fair way of doing it?

Apple should cover the royalties for the duration of the free trial, of course. It's the right thing to do.

 

[sofila]

Besides not being a particularly nice comment, this shows a lack of understanding of how many, if not most, people listen to music. I might listen to a new song or an album quite a bit the first few weeks after I first hear it. Then after that, unless it's in like the top 100 or so songs I really love and seek out regularly in my music, it just goes into the shuffle with the literally thousands of other songs I like.

So if the OP's song came up in the free trial or I happened to hear about it somewhere, and I check it out during the trial and really like it, I might listen to it a dozen times or so. Total amount paid out for all those listens during the trial? Zilch.

And then maybe I'd listen to it maybe a couple times a year after that, if it's lucky enough to come up in the shuffle? I'm sure there are Beatles songs that I haven't listened to in years just because they haven't come up in the shuffle. Not because I don't like those songs, or don't think they're worth paying for, but just because they don't come up.

When you're being paid based on the number of listens, that's potentially a lot of lost revenue during the free trial period.

My 64 gb iPod holds about 14000 songs selected during years and years with only one goal: try to never skip a song. It takes me 18 months (3 hours a day) to go on and be sure to have listened to all of them at least once.
I use smart playlists to be sure about this. I can't even imagine what kind of possibilities a xx million figures catalog could bring to my ears. The whole lifetime of all Macrumors forum members wouldn't be enough to listen to them all.
Sorry for my bad english.