I have not respect for artists and their art and I love having no respect for artists and their art. Money is much better in my pocket than in anybody else's.
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Taylor Swift Criticizes Apple Music's Free Trial in Open Letter
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I have not respect for artists and their art and I love having no respect for artists and their art. Money is much better in my pocket than in anybody else's.
She's being very disingenuous with respect to her letter to Apple.
1) She is only pulling her new album, 1989. Everything else of hers will stream.
2) Spotify will not be able to stream 1989, even though they pay.
3) Saying her actions are to support the other unknown artists is laughable; it's about maximizing profits of her new album. Her goal is to make a lot of money with 1989 through album purchases (such as the iTunes store), not small streaming percentages.
4) After the dust has settled after a year has gone by and she has made much more money through SALES, that album will be in the streaming pool as well.
1) She is only pulling her new album, 1989. Everything else of hers will stream.
2) Spotify will not be able to stream 1989, even though they pay.
3) Saying her actions are to support the other unknown artists is laughable; it's about maximizing profits of her new album. Her goal is to make a lot of money with 1989 through album purchases (such as the iTunes store), not small streaming percentages.
4) After the dust has settled after a year has gone by and she has made much more money through SALES, that album will be in the streaming pool as well.
Nice to read someone who is actually affected and who knows what they are talking about. So many posts on this forum are from the Kool-aid-drinking fan base and can be translated as, "Apple Gooood", "Not-Apple Baaad".
yes but that may not apply for the Android version, unless they advertise their products of course.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Well obviously, this is MacRumors, not CopyPasta Forums.
Sure, but as smart as many of us seem to be, you'd think we could be a bit more objective about topics like this. The love & loyalty to a brand is dazzling but does it really need to be put about all else in all things? I like Apple just fine. I own lots of Apple stuff. If we all gathered together in one place, I'd likely blend right in. But wow, sometimes our group here just seems so over the top. There are so many threads on this site where we argue on behalf of being sure the artists get paid. We are so anti-middlemen-brands ripping off the flow of profits from us consumers to the artists who create what we want to buy. Now here's a situation where Apple is going to be the middleman and the artists are basically crying out for help. What do we do? Most of us sees it as Apple vs. starving artists and the latter is wrong... and here's 30 reasons why.
MACrumors or not, can we not have our own opinions? If we're writing what we actually believe, would it be the same if this was a Samsung-based thread for a new Samsung streaming music? It should be the same. But I believe we'd be at least 90% the other way. If my belief is true, we're not really writing what we believe but simply trading off what we believe in blind support of a brand.
My own take here is that this is actually a PR problem. A relatively high profile artist has now taken on a stance here not for loading her own well-loaded pockets but for the poor end of the pond in which she's one of the biggest fish. If her plea resonates enough, maybe other bigger-name artists will chime in too (against which we will of course bash the crap out of them and their music as well). However, if enough stink can be made here, Apple could flip the entire situation around by spending a relatively small amount of money to subsidize the artists during the free trial and then even spin that as Apple very tangibly looking out for the artists. Such a move would put great pressure on Apple's competitors like Spotify to show how they too are looking out for the artists. And Apple's sheer size and power would win that PR battle, making them look so very good beyond us Apple fans instead of looking like a big bully shifting costs to starving artists such that some of those artists have to try to speak up in their calls for help.
Apple would write the entire expense off as marketing expense associated with launching this new service. That would lower their tax liability which would help such a VERY profitable company. Apple could leverage iAd to help pay for the trial spinning that the ads will stop once the free trial ends. I would guess THAT could probably foot the bill for the whole trial such that it would cost Apple nothing out of pocket.
Is there precedent for this? Remember when Apple took action after some suicides in China? They implemented some new standards for Chinese labor building Apple products. That most certainly cost Apple some money. But it also scored big points on good will, making Apple look like a company that cares about the little guy.
Remember when Apple was getting some bad PR for not being as green as possible? Apple has spent HUGE to evolve their manufacturing so they can improve their reputation as being much more of a green company today.
In both cases, they were not forced to do either but they chose to move on both either because they genuinely cared about their effect on the little guy or it was worth it from a PR perspective. Here's another chance. A simple choice this week could be spun into Apple looking out for the starving artists. Yes, like the Chinese labor thing or the "let's be more environmentally sound" thing, it would cost some money (upwards of about $2.2 Billion if 100 million people took Apple up on all 3 months of the free trial). But WOW!.. could Apple spin that as a very tangible example of how they care about the artists who create the music that we and Apple love. They'll write the whole cost off and more than make up for it if a fair amount of subscribers decide to pay for the subscription, so this would likely cost Apple a whole lot less than evolving Chinese labor practices or getting so green.
That's an easy, simple, relatively low-cost solution that would have artists both big & small praising Apple instead of crying out for help. A big part of PR is turning lemons into lemonade. In this case, a little marketing expense would fully resolve this issue and have the Taylor Swifts and the Brian Jonestown Massacres singing their praises instead of casting them as a new "greedy middleman."
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That's a lame cop out. Yes, for sure, go to their live shows. Yes, they make more money from shows. All true. So that means they shouldn't make anything from their albums? That means they should just suck up the tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of dollars spent to produce an album and just hope to make up for it at shows? That means we should all just ignore the fact that streaming services treat artists and art like ****? And we should support those services with our dollars (dollars the artists rarely see) and excuse ourselves by saying things like "hate the game, not the players". Real cool.
Why do people like you think art is worthless? That artists shouldn't be compensated? Why do you feel entitled to enjoy their fruits of their creation for free?
And we wonder why, as the Pope recently said, the Earth is turning into an "immense pile of filth"? People like you.
Apple is starting a new business to make money... That business consists of a service that takes someone else's work - music - and resells it by streaming it. Hosting, storage, bandwidth, marketing, programming, management... are all cost elements of that new business, whose prime component is someone else's music!!!!
Is Apple forcing internet/mobile carriers to subsidize the stream during the trail? No.
Are marketers being paid? server administrators? server and hard drive manufacturers? Yes, yes, yes and yes.
And it's not like Apple is making the artists and musicians shareholders of the business either, so why should they be the only ones not getting paid? And remember, without artists and musicians, btw, there would be no music, hence NO business whatsoever.
Of course there's the argument that "Apple saved the music industry with the iTunes business model, which helped curve down piracy"... but that argument is seriously debated... and if it really saved the industry, why should it save it again now?
So yes, Apple should pay them as they pay for everything else needed to launch a profitable business consisting in reselling someone else's work.
Apple should live up to the responsibility it holds as the company it claims to be - by really innovating and developing better products - instead of looking for petty ways of cheating workers, artists, developers and customers from pennies of their work.
PS. I really wonder what makes some folks blindly and stubbornly defend Apple in what is a clear case of greedy douchebaggery. I seriously wonder.
If an artist waited until the initial wave of new users had signed on...could you potentially earn a little more?
I think because most of the people here are techies (not all of course), they do care about gadgets and money but no about art and that includes Apple pretty much. I love both tech and music.
For Apple money comes first then Art.
I place a lot of faith and trust in Trent that he wouldn't be involved in this project or explaining it in a video launch unless he believed it was a good solution for artists. I may be accused of having misplaced faith but I've followed him and his interviews for long enough to feel that he believes in artists having as much power and control as possible together with being able to actually make money from their craft. So when I heard he was heavily involved with this solution and saw him in the video.. I felt this must be a very good solution for the artists.
I wonder if Taylor attempted to reach out to Apple before writing this "open letter". She's entitled to her opinion but it does feel very public.
She is either shortsighted or attention seeking. If Apple succeeds in gaining millions of paid subscribers then labels and artists stand to make far far more than they ever would from any other streaming service.
Seriously? If you really don't know who she is (and you're not just trolling), how can you even ask #2? She most definitely wrote that letter herself. I believe she was the only artist to have a platinum album (selling over 1 million copies...selling, not streaming) last year, her third platinum in a row. She's one of the few bright spots (financially speaking) in the music industry today. She writes and produces her own music. Love her or hate her (I honestly don't know any of her songs), she's the real deal.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
They can't. Wholesalers can buy tons of product and then give it away if they wish. It happens all the time. It's perfectly legal.
She's such a hypercrit - her music and the accompanying videos are available for free on her YouTube VEVO page which is funded by adverts, yet she won't have her album available on Spotify's free tier, funded by adverts?
And now she's hissing at Apple and claiming they need to dig into their (very very deep) pockets during a free trial? What about her very deep pockets?
She uses small and upcoming bands as a smoke screen for her narcissism! If Apple agreed to cover the royalties for these poor and unfortunate small bands then she'd still pull another excuse from her ***.
And now she's hissing at Apple and claiming they need to dig into their (very very deep) pockets during a free trial? What about her very deep pockets?
She uses small and upcoming bands as a smoke screen for her narcissism! If Apple agreed to cover the royalties for these poor and unfortunate small bands then she'd still pull another excuse from her ***.
how do you know she hasn't considered those things? she states apple is one of her best partners at selling her music..
idk, I believe she's sincere when saying she's not too worried about the $50,000 she might not be paid for trial streams and is more concerned with the $200 which the much lesser knowns will miss out on.. likewise, she's using her voice to speak on their behalf knowing damn well if the little guy speaks up, it will not be heard.
The Top record seller in your country last year, unless you are not american.
This is exactly right. I want to subscribe to Apple Music and I would use it to listen to music that I otherwise wouldn't have bought and considering artists probably get paid PER stream, a lot of artists would be getting a lot more money from me due to my streaming of their music than they would if I didn't subscribe, which would be $0.
I just think the easier you make it for people to hear your music in the first place, the better the chances of people wanting to listen to it again. I think if people were only going to stream your album for free for 3 months then never listen to it (or anything else you do) ever again, you probably weren't losing a long-term paying fan anyway.
I don't know either, but I'm not american, had she erotic photos leaked when the icloud thing?
Agreed. She's loaded. But rather than just let Apple be a bully and take advantage of artists, she's using her fame and ability to get press to draw attention to something that is blatantly unfair and cravenly opportunistic on Apple's part. Zero respect. I will NOT be signing up for Apple Music. They are filthy rich and all of their talk about art and artists and being at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, etc. really rings hollow. Put your money where your mouth is, Apple. Pay people for their hard work.
Not yet but i expect that to happen as soon as she starts selling less records in the future...