Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Yes both are but i'm not that sure about this: If the music labels didn't want Apple to do the free 3 month trial it wouldn't happen.

Spotify is already giving 3 months for free hence Apple must have that too.

This is not true.
Spotify is advertising their "premium service " for 3 months for $0.99 .
https://www.spotify.com/us/


You can listen to Spotify for free but it is very limited,ad supported and low quality.
 
What about this guys:

Apple is not adopting the free model (like Spotify), artist should be grateful because of that, they shouldn't complain about those 3 free months...what do you think?

Big difference. Spotify's free model is supported by Ad's. Apples is not not.
 
I don't know anything about music streaming services, but isn't the idea to take away customers from other streaming services? If a lesser known musician was making, say, £10 a day from a rivals service, and that drops off because people move to Apple's with its 3 month trial then that musician will be getting less that isn't being made up for due to said trial.



Phew, I'm glad you told us all your opinion of her.

I thought forums was for expressing opinions. I stated that it was my personal take. I certainly didn't step on any others that liked her. And why single me out? There are others that have made similar statements. We do have freedom of speech.
 
You are stating that people should call Apple and ask to skip the free trial? That's dumb. Just sign up and support another streaming service. They'll have music that Apple's service likely won't have anyway and it will better push apple to change their ways.
You're missing the point. People here are upset because the artists are not being paid. All I'm saying is if you want the artists paid so badly then skip the free trial and start a paid subscription. Of course it doesn't make sense for somebody to ditch the trial. But if they want the artists paid then pay them themselves since they are the ones listening to the music.
 
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?
You don't get it. You can't use someone else's property (including intellectual property) for free. Investment went into creating that intellectual property (housing, food, instruments, studio time, hours of labor from musicians, producers, engineers, mixers, masterers).

Just because Hertz or Avis is not getting anything from me now doesn't mean I can use their rental car for free for 3 months. I certainly can't use Apple's Logic Pro or Final Cut Pro for 3 months free. The coders/programmers need to get paid for their creation. I can't use my neighbor's lawn mower for 3 months free. I can't live in a rental property for 3 months free.

Giving something away for free devalues that commodity. It's not the artists giving away a song for free as a loss leader to sell an album. It's a 3rd party giving away someone else's intellectual property away for free to help sell the 3rd party's business.
 
Last edited:
A solution for this problem is for Apple to count each trial subscriber as a full paying customer in determining what to pay the artists and then to pay out the artists accordingly.

But many trial subscribers will not become paid subscribers (quite likely the vast majority will not). Why would you expect Apple to accept an unlimited liability like that?
 
You're missing the point. People here are upset because the artists are not being paid. All I'm saying is if you want the artists paid so badly then skip the free trial and start a paid subscription. Of course it doesn't make sense for somebody to ditch the trial. But if they want the artists paid then pay them themselves since they are the ones listening to the music.

I don't think I'm missing the point. You are telling people to call apple to skip the free trial but what you are ignoring is that there are a ton of competing companies out there....so why would someone call Apple when they can just speak there opinion by giving a competing service there money? Also - Why would someone want to pay for a service whose policies they don't agree with?
 
she needs to back off the streaming industry...NOW

You need top back off...NOW. :p

What does Britney Spears think?

Well, if Britney is here: - then your opinion (WTF are you, after all?) is





---- down here. ;)

Honestly, a bunch of internet NOBODIES criticizing someone else they think doesn't matter. It's actually pretty amusing. :D

But then I hear the Millennials ALL think they're all so self-important (Facebook and Twitter tries to make them think so as it makes them more money). Yes, see how important you are when you get that college degree, owe a ton of money and no one wants to hire you since all the jobs have gone to India, China and soon lots of other Asian countries. Yes, see how much it matters then that you have 200 friends on Facebook. Star of the world. Armchair quarterbacks one and all. :confused:
 
But many trial subscribers will not become paid subscribers (quite likely the vast majority will not). Why would you expect Apple to accept an unlimited liability like that?

Maybe Apple should further limit there trial period the to something they and the artists can agree upon.
 
Do you really think that many people paying for Spotify or Rdio or whatever are going to cancel their subscription for 3 months just because Apple is offering a free trial? I'm a paying Spotify subscriber. I have tons of playlists and 1,000+ songs cached for offline listening. No way am I going to try and re-create that in Apple Music just because of their free trial.

And yeah Apple can afford to subsidize this free trial. Heck they could probably afford a 6 month free trial. But if Apple did that then they'd be investigated for unfair and uncompetitive practices and everyone would be complaining about Apple using their massive war chest to put Spotify and others out of business.

I don't know how many folks will cancel Spotify subscriptions, but I do believe folks using the free service will move over to the free Apple service because it will be done a bit better. Also I think folks will stop signing up for Spotify while they can get free Apple TV. This applies for ALL other streaming services. They will all have a decrease in their customer growth this summer if there is a free and excellent service available.

Also an App will recreate your spotify list in Apple Music by the end of July. At least that is my guess.
 
Well, going from little income to no-income is a significant drop in earnings...

Nope - going from little income to no income is a little drop in earnings.

I'll will happily be convinced if you or anyone puts some actual figures into your argument.

If you are concerned with the welfare of struggling artists talk me through how much they might typically earn from free streaming services in three months, and what % of their total income from music that might be...
 
This whole argument would be much more convincing if you could plug in some figures to the theory.

How much does a typical artist who is "living from paycheck to paycheque" typically earn from other streaming services?

Yeah, I'm just guessing. But I do know that there are "starving" artists. I do know that is not made up. They struggle from week to week and they tend to work on the Indie labels which I strongly suspect do not have a few months of capital just sitting in the bank to tide them over. Small companies generally are finely balanced with cash coming in equalling cash going out pretty closely. If this Apple Music launch does what I think it will do which is drop the revenue of all the streaming services by 20% and iTunes sales by some solid percentage while not adding a balancing revenue anywhere, then the music industry is going to feel this. For the indie and the artists the revenue from these services is pure revenue with no cost associated. Any decrease in this goes straight to the bottom line. So if you business generates $100k per month but costs $90k to run, having the revenue decrease just a bit really gets you in trouble really quickly.
 
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.

Did you even read the letter? She's made it clear this isn't about her music. She's fully aware she's financially set for life.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Benjamin Frost
But isn't Apple asking these artists to act as a welfare system for Apple by providing their content which has value to apple for free?

A solution for this problem is for Apple to count each trial subscriber as a full paying customer in determining what to pay the artists and then to pay out the artists accordingly.

Apple paying the artists nothing just conveys that Apple does not value their content, IMO.

Plan and simple, Apple should not be externalizing the cost for acquiring customers to the Artists.

If it isn't generating any revenue, what value is it giving to Apple?

If your answer is that it adds value to the Apple Music service in the long run, then by the same token that must be adding value for the artists too.
 
She's right. Artists depend on sales to make a living and to not pay these artists is wrong.

Nobody is forcing the artists to submit their music to Apple Music. On the other hand if they want to have their music there they have to invest in it by not collecting three months worth of royalty revenue. It's just business. On the other hand, they are collecting higher revenue from Apple Music than from Spotify so I think the artists / labels are only trying to gather free press or are just plain greedy. Anyway, Spotify hasn't yet made any profit so the artists should just shut up since they are the ones making the money.
 
Aren't they already stumping the cost for bringing the music to everyone during the trial period? Aren't there costs associated with all the hardware, software and people hired to make this happen???
Yes, there are. But that's one expense of many - licensing is something all streaming musical services need to pay for, as well as hardware, software and people.
 
  • Like
Reactions: aylk
You don't get it. You can't use someone else's property (including intellectual property) for free. Investment went into creating that intellectual property (housing, food, instruments, studio time, hours of labor from musicians, producers, engineers, mixers, masterers).

Just because Hertz or Avis is not getting anything from me now doesn't mean I can use their rental car for free for 3 months. I certainly can't use Apple's Logic Pro or Final Cut Pro for 3 months free. The coders/programmers need to get paid for their creation. I can't use my neighbor's lawn mower for 3 months free. I can't live in a rental property for 3 months free.

Giving something away for free devalues that commodity. It's not the artists giving away a song for free as a loss leader to sell an album. It's a 3rd party giving away someone else's intellectual property away for free to help sell the 3rd party's business.
You can if you negotiate it as such, which is what the labels have done. Blame the labels if you don't like it. Also it's arguably not free, if there will be an ROI after 3 months.
 
Music hosting does not cost as much as you might think.
Video hosting is tons more expensive and you can fully finance it via ads. The whole infrastructure physical part of the occasion costs actually very very little per song.
The point it the free trial is a way for Apple to lure people to their service. It is their promotion for their service, so they should pay for their own promotion.
So why don't the labels all get together and start their own streaming service where they take all of the money and then continue to give peanuts to the artists? :p Probably because the costs don't just include hosting and content delivery...

The music industry as a whole stands to gain in the long term if Apple Music becomes a huge success and sets new industry standards in revenue sharing and molding consumer behavior. They actually stand to gain a lot more than Apple does in this scenario. Looking at it from that perspective, and I'm sure the big labels have seen this, it almost makes sense that since the Music Industry has an even greater vested interest in seeing Apple Music succeed than Apple itself, that it "fronts" the incremental cost of the launch. I think that the individual artists and the smaller indie labels either haven't thought of this, or are being short sighted. I also don't think that the initial impact of revenue loss will be as high as they are anticipating/worrying about.
 
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.
For real? I don't even listen to music but she has a very very good point. What if Amazon, Best Buy, and other resellers offered iPhones for free for 3 month trial and you can give it back without paying Apple a cent.

This is typical Apple bullying and defended by people who just want stuff for free.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Benjamin Frost
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.