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Taylor Swift Criticizes Apple Music's Free Trial in Open Letter

As expected, this forum tends to foster a pro-apple attitude. Unfortunately, this means a lot of condescending comments with very little thought other than echoing "why wouldn't you want apple on your side?"

Let me put it simply: if I can listen to an artist for free from my Apple music stream, then I am much less likely to go on youtube, for example, and watch the ads that actually fund artists. Multiply this by 3 months, in which time an artist's new album might become less popular, and its easy to see that he/she has lost thousands of dollars.

And the talk about how ubiquitous pirating is on this forum is simply laughable. Some people make it seem like every 10 year old girl and 70 year old grandmother is pirating music rather than clicking "buy" on iTunes.
 
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pubwvj said:
Apple really needs to write off the cost as part of their marketing plan and pay the producers/singers/etc. This three months free is Apple's advertising cost and should not be shouldered by the performers.


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The performers benefit from the three months free in that more people who currently don't buy music start paying a monthly fee to listen to music. At least that's what the studios who entered into the deal must think, otherwise they wouldn't have entered into the deal.

Maybe since the studios entered into the deal on behalf of the artists who had no say in it, the studios should pay the artists during those three months?

by the way, it's not like the artists have to work for free during those three months. Their work is done. This isn't free labor.

Swift's entire argument is premised on the assumption that musical artists are entitled to a compensation model where they get paid every time someone listens to their songs. This is not how anyone else gets paid. I didn't get paid each time someone booted up a chip I designed.
 
Swinson said:
It isn't about affording it, it is about equity stakes in future potential earning.

Think of Apple and the Artists as partners in a deal that will make both of them money. Both have to bring something to the table to make the deal work... Apple is bringing the tech and the artist has the content...both are valuable one is a hard cash investment (Apple's tech and bandwidth) and the artist is bringing a softer tangible, the content. Remember most of the content has been bought and paid for many times over (even with the indy artists)...but the bandwidth costs...those are ever increasing.
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It's fair to say that Apple is also making a substantial financial investment in marketing, not to mention providing access to a huge potential paying audience.
 
I guess she has been misinformed. Apple IS paying for the 3 month trial. They are paying be offering a higher-than-industry-standard % payment AFTER the trial, ongoing.

She may not like how MUCH she gets paid for the free trial, or when, and that's all fair for both parties to negotiate (and take to the public as a negotiating tactic). But if she participated, she WOULD get paid for the 3 months.

She would also get paid because a free trial earns more customers for her AND Apple. Free trials are money makers by design, and she would have a cut of that extra market.

I certainly think artists/labels should be free to opt out of anything they don't like, but the facts aren't as simple as she presents.
 
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Spotify has a 3 month summer trial (well, $.99). Do they pay the artists for it? If so, there should be no excuse Apple.
 
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Independent record labels in Britain say Apple is using this market dominance to enforce unreasonable terms on them when it comes to the company’s new music service, which was announced at the recent Apple developer conference. The head of Britain’s music lobby group told The Telegraph his members are outraged that the company wants labels to help subsidize a three-month trial of Apple Music, in which they will see zero music royalties for their content.

The UK Music spokesman said that to his knowledge, no independent labels have signed on with Apple Music yet, which means that the service could launch without some significant artists on board. Independent labels like Xl Recordings and Domino represent a number of popular acts such as Adele, The Arctic Monkeys and Alabama Shakes. Some industry sources estimate that as many as 50% of the independent labels could decide to keep their content out of Apple’s new service because of its terms.
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https://fortune.com/2015/06/17/apple-music-labels/
 
NachoGrande said:
It's called a loss leader... Don't worry you'll be back to pulling in 100's of millions after this terrible trial period.. I hope you can make it until then.
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Guess what? Loss leaders are principally covered by the retail establishment to encourage their own sales. Supermarkets do not decide to offer free Doritos, while denying Frito-Lay any form of compensation for the duration of the loss leader.

It seems Apple is expecting Music to increase profits for artists as well as for Apple itself. In that case Apple should have been more *transparent* if it required artists to help Music promotion. Bad move on Apple's part, that does not bring much love.
 
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jmh600cbr said:
she needs to back off the streaming industry...NOW
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MattXDA said:
Attention seeking.
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Yeah! How DARE people be asked to be paid for their work! Shame on them!

Sheza said:
But if you think about it... she wasn't getting anything from Apple Music subscriptions before it was a thing. In 3 months time, she will start getting money from Apple Music subscriptions.

How is it putting people out of jobs when they got 0 before and will get 0 for free months and then something?

People understand that streaming music services are temporary - if they stop paying, they stop being able to listen. Is this really going to hurt CD / iTunes sales? Because if people really support one particular artists they might not stump up the subscription fee just to listen to a handful of artists, and instead they will just buy like they always used to.

I basically don't agree that CD / iTunes sales would be impacted as much as the industry fears.
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Because people aren't getting 0 before.

If the amount of people that is estimated to switch to Apple Music does, there goes a huge amount of revenue artists have lost. There's 3 months less than what they were making originally. For many big name artists like Taylor, or Beyonce, or whoever, that's really not a lot, but for a lot of indie kids and the people in their basement who work other jobs, losing that amount of revenue for 3 months does

A) Eats into a major source of income for these people
B) Provides the artist no motive for making music
 
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Apple is also paying a few percentage points higher than the competition to account for the trial.

Given that any given time some percentage of listeners will be on free trial and some will be paying, and given that a higher percentage of the paying subscriber's fees goes to the artists than with Spotify, etc., the artists will have a constant stream of income that probably is just as high as if there was no trial.

What the artists want is the higher percentage and no free trials. Greedy artists.
 
mdapple said:
As expected, this forum tends to foster a pro-apple attitude. Unfortunately, this means a lot of condescending comments with very little thought other than echoing "why wouldn't you want apple on your side?"

Let me put it simply: if I can listen to an artist for free from my Apple music stream, then I am much less likely to go on youtube, for example, and watch the ads that actually fund artists. Multiply this by 3 months, in which time an artist's new album might become less popular, and its easy to see that he/she has lost thousands of dollars.

And the talk about how ubiquitous pirating is on this forum is simply laughable. Some people make it seem like every 10 year old girl and 70 year old grandmother is pirating music rather than clicking "buy" on iTunes.
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Thousands of dollars? There are some indie artists getting paid tens of dollars or even less (yes, tens, not thousands) for a million streams on Spotify.
 
MRrainer said:
The question is: how much fraud would it generate if Apple paid out money to artists from people on trial-accounts?
The fraud problem seems to be large enough just with pre-paid cards. I can't imagine what a bunch of penny-pinching crooks and an army of bots and humans from China or Cambodia could do.
E.g. you could create an Indie-Label and produce albums full of non-copyrighted la-la-la music and have hundreds, thousands of fake trial-period signups (and software to play the songs for you or have it play in the background at volume zero on an army of p4wned PCs).
Just because you or I can't make it work doesn't mean that nobody else is going to find a working "business-case"...

If they (APPL) don't have to pay out anything during the trial period, they don't need to look through subscribers (and labels9 to detect a fraud-pattern, either.

Is there a way for Indie-Labels to have their music on this streaming-service without offering it to people who are on a trial-period? That would be the correct thing to, IMO.
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Good point! I was siding with Taylor I have to say, but I honestly hadn't thought of that.
 
I think to view the thoughts behind this let's reverse the situation shall we?

Someone else, wishes to offer the public something, and to encourage the public to consider paying for this service long term, they are going to offer the public this for 3 months for free.

This "thing" Happens to be made by Apple. Apple has spend time and money, and earns it's income off of this.
Do you feel Apple would be fine with this other company, offering what Apple has made, to the public for free for 3 months, in the hope that perhaps there may be some future money to follow?
 
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Levelut said:
Lastly I do want to say that being a business owner I understand that no income for three months is terrible and strains the cash flow horribly, but if it is an incentive to raise sales in the long run, then just suck it up and push through. I get it that some artists believe they should receive compensation, but what about all those artists who maybe sell nothing during those months? or better yet, those songs that no one listens to in those 3 months. Do you actually think they deserve something for just having their cover in Apple Music?

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Levelut
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Its not no income. Its no additional income (for 3 months) to what they are earning now. A big difference.
 
I just don't understand all this bickering about the trial period, as for me I won't even try out the Apple Music even if it's free. So, what does that do for those Artists, nothing. and for those that don't even buy music? Nothing.
 
Just out of interest and curiosity, can anyone quantify just how much Apple would have to pay out if they were to pay artists during those first 3 months? I imagine it's highly subjective, but are we talking millions? billions?
 
*rolls eyes* whatever.... like I care what Taylor Swift says... I didn't leave Spotify when she pulled her music ... I just got hold of a MP3 and uploaded the missing songs onto my Spotify playlist.
 
Frazzle said:
A while ago, my local supermarket offered a free hammock with 50 euros spent on groceries. I don't think the manufacturer of the hammock offered the product to the supermarket for free. After all, it's about getting customers into the supermarket - not about promoting hammocks.

The same goes for Apple. Even though I love (most of the) products they make, as a company they're becoming less and less sympathetic. The new CEO seems to be Scrooge McDuck.

Actually it's sad to see that any company that becomes too rich and powerful starts behaving exactly like IBM and Microsoft in their heyday, by more or less betraying the trust of their best customers.
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I'm going to bet the supermarket ate the price of the hammock...
 
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Apple shouldn't press gang indies to add their music to the service, in fear of missing out. But then again, they could just not sign up until the three month trial period has ended? Just let the big 5 / 4 (whatever there is now) take the hit for three months and then sign up your indie artists to this streaming service.

Apple won't stop the music industries global sales for 3 months just because you can listen to content for free off Apple Music - people already do that with thousands of torrent sites. The same crisis hit artists when it was suggested that iTunes Match was a just piracy laundering service. It is - but did it cripple the music industry? No, it made paying customers of music pirates.

What they will do however is create hundreds of millions of customers of a service, half of which will maintain it after this trial period because they enjoy the convenience, the other half will just forget that their bank cards are already locked in and will be charged on the 91st day. Boom, millions of customers, who wouldn't have started using it had they needed to pay upfront.

I hear this Taylor Swift is quite popular (though her name sounds like a porn star to me) but I don't really think she's a spokesperson for the recording industry and she certainly isn't a business person. She's a product, being sold by faceless suits.
 
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Gonna have to agree with Taylor here. Don't be greedy, Apple - do something about this.
 
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