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Taylor Swift Criticizes Apple Music's Free Trial in Open Letter
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She's more of a performance artist, right? Which of her hit songs did she write herself, I forget...
Doesn't mean she's not talented, though...
Well they did agree it with the major labels. The length of the trial isn't something that could be negotiated separately with lots of different artists and smaller labels.
This is not about Apple offering a three month free service, this is about paying the artists. If Apple wants to offer a free service they are welcome to do so but offer it on their Dime. They are just being cheap by creating a sales pitch that they are not prepared to pay for. Good for you Taylor, it takes the large successful Artist to speak up without fear of being made a victim.
If Eddie Cue had bothered to explain anything at all about how this service actually works on stage instead of spending a half hour showing us songs he likes, this whole thing would have been cleared up from the get go. I hope they fire whatever bozo wrote that keynote. Seriously dropped, quite a few balls in that one.
She wrote many many many of her songs actually. Her portfolio is huge. I'm sure that it was mostly lyrics. But that's 50% of the writing credit.
Having said that: I'm usually on her side with these things except this time.
Apple is trying to gain business with the initial 3 month free offering that will ultimately benefit both parties if people like the service.
Swift is showing her greed now...
Sounds like you truly hope for that to happen. I hope people don't hope for you to fail at your business.
We'll see when Apple music go's live. What artists will Apple music be missing and who will care?
Taylor Swift has written every single song she's ever released and every song on all her 5 albums. Her third album, her most critically acclaimed, was done without any co-writers.
But that's the point - if an artist is struggling that much, then their income from free streaming services will be virtually $0.
Which was Swift's rationale for pulling her music from spotify.
Check out this graphic:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/infobeautiful2/selling_out_550.png
From that an artist needs to be streamed around 330,000 times to earn the same as selling just 1 album on CD or iTunes.
I would think it extremely unlikely that an artist struggling that much would be streamed that much.
And even if they were they'd only earn as much as they would from just 1 album sale.
So the principle is one thing, but in practical terms with actual figures it doesn't stack up.
Technically the artists would be providing a welfare system for the fans. Apple wouldn't be making any money off the deal until somebody subscribes, at which point the artists start making money too.
Spot on. They barely mentioned any of the obvious advantages of streaming from a massive library for the average customer, but for some reason went to great lengths to explain how great manually curated playlists are like they had invented something great and new. The icing on the cake though was trying to make a 24 hour radio station seem like a revolution.
All in all the Apple Music presentation was a huge wasted opportunity that focused on all the wrong things.
It should be a loss leader for Apple's music service not the Artists. Apple's not taking any loss. They're giving away the Artist's property for free.
Taylor Swift is not talking about her own income. She is sticking up for Independent Artists who have no voice when dealing with multi-billion dollar corporations.
Apple's services are only to sell devices of which the Artists get no share. Apple makes money off the devices not the services. You can't stream music out of thin air. You need a device.
Just because my neighbor's car is sitting unused doesn't mean I can use it for free or give it away.
I understand that, but you are talking about 90 days of no payments. There aren't too many people that would be very happy with you if you didn't pay them for 90 days after buying something. That said, the artists have the opportunity to opt out of the service if they don't like terms. So I'm not feeling bad for artists in the least. All I was expressing was surprise that Apple has chosen "no compensation" over "reduced compensation" during the trial period.
She writes or co-writes all of her own music. She is listed as a writer on every track she has ever released.
Her entire third album, Speak Now, was written and composed entirely by Swift herself and sold over 1 million copies in its first week.
So no, I wouldn't say that she is just a performance artist.
Actually... If you were trying to start a lobster subscription service which would definitely increase the long-term amount of lobster paid for and consumed in the world... it would be completely reasonable to ask the fishermen (who will ultimately benefit VERY MUCH in the long term from increased revenue) to provide the lobster for that party for free.
Hope that helps you understand loss-leaders.
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Actually, those who have the most to gain are the labels, since they're taking 70% of the split with Apple (then paying whatever of that to the artists). So, in fact, Swift may be attacking Apple on this, but really BOTH the labels AND Apple should be footing the bill for the trial period, and they should share the cost on the same 70/30 split; 70 paid to their artists by the labels, and 30 paid by Apple. After all, the labels have a lot to gain from the deal, since they'll be receiving it from all artists in their roster once it enters the paid phase. A single artist, not so much...
But Taylor hates Spotify. Taylor "put her foot down and said no" to Spotify, why are you still paying for Spotify?
You make no sense.
She's written all of her songs since she was 14 yrs old. She's a songwriter.
I'm not sure I hear anyone speaking reason in this conversation.
The 3 months trial period will be good for ALL artists in the long run. You're foregoing revenue up front in order to "hook" more people and make that revenue up in the long run. It's just a matter of whether or not that tradeoff is financially "worth it". If it is, great. If not, Apple wouldn't be doing it in the first place. Don't forget Apple is also foregoing "getting paid".
It's a revenue-sharing agreement. The consumer is getting something (temporarily) for free. It's not as though Apple is getting paid and the artists aren't. NO ONE is getting paid.
Perhaps Apple could work out an alternate agreement with artists who aren't willing to forego that initial 3 months of revenue in exchange for a lower royalty rate in the future.
Apple doesn't have a free tier at all, they have a trial, that's it. After it's over you pay or you don't, there's no other option. The main difference is that when you do pay, the royalties Apple pay are higher, so in the long term Apple are increasing the value of music, over Spotify, which is surely a good thing.
What really remains to be seen is whether or not streaming will take over from buying outright, however it does seem to be the way the industry is trying to force things. After all if none of us own the music we love we will have to pay them forever if we want to listen to it, which is surely what the record labels have been after since there were record labels. And there's no guarantee that when enough people have switched and CD's are no more it will stay at £9.99 a month, there's nothing stopping it going up and up.
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