After being publicly smacked down by music’s biggest star, Apple is changing its tune. Late Sunday night, Apple VP Eddy Cue responded to the open letter that Taylor Swift posted earlier in the day, revealing that Apple now plans to pay artists, labels, and publishers for streams during Apple Music’s three-month free trial. The premium streaming service is due to launch on June 30th.
Taylor Swift just outsmarted one of the biggest, richest, and most arrogant companies on earth. Impressive.
The fact that Apple announced this sudden tail-between-its-legs change of heart in the middle of the night (might’ve been late Sunday night for US – I suck at timezones), via Twitter no less, is indicative of how badly thought-out this whole Apple Music thing seems to be. The presentation during WWDC was awkward, the three month trial period heavily criticised, and now this. Curious.
This whole thing seems just a little too clean, and planned out, to me. It smacks of manipulation and marketing, on both sides.
I agree with you. It all feels a little too convenient for both sides.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
In my opinion, it would be incorrect to apply Hanlon’s Razor to these types of instances, in general. To say that Apple took that stance after months of negotiations with record labels because they were too naive to realize the collateral damage is… well… naive. The decision was done for a specific business purpose and the response the same. I just find the 2 decisions far too convenient to be considered separately.
EDIT:
Let me just add something, having worked on multi-million projects in the past. The decision making likely went like this: “We’ll offer the service for free of charge during the first 3 months and not pay artists. That will get more people to join and make us a bunch of money in the future with little risk. If there’s some sort of industry backlash for the decision out contingency play is to revert the decision about paying artist and get all the goodwill of now doing right by them.”
The human brain is very strange, and for some reason when you make something worse and later return things to the status quo people feel like progress is being made, when in reality things are exactly how they’ve always been.
Edited 2015-06-22 14:30 UTC
Exactly. Apple have done nothing to improve its public relation, in fact it is getting worse. You should not rely your digital life on a single company, you shouldn’t.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Hanlon%27s_razor
Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice.
Fixed it for you, no need for thanks.
by numpti on Mon 22nd Jun 2015 13:21 UTC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
by avgalen on Mon 22nd Jun 2015 13:21 UTC
…basically the same
You have been outvoted
(and I swear that I have no idea who numpti is)
It is Numpty
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/numpty
Another word that IMHO is just as good, is Plonker.
I never mentioned malice, just deliberate manipulation and marketing. It’s just what businesses, and artist with no real musical talent, do because they couldn’t survive without it.
Anybody who thinks Apple wasn’t intenting to scrap this stupid term all along is naive. They just waited for some “Star” (how conveniant that it was Swift who thinks Spotify stinks and loves Apple, coincidece?) to complain so that they get even more free marketing.
I think lesser of each website which covered this farce. Famous german Heise.de had three stories covering this crap. Pathetic.
That’s my take. Absolutely fantastic PR, they even carried it as news item on the main BBC news tonight. And quite suddenly tens of millions of extra people know that there is something called Apple Music. Very well executed manoeuvre.
Apple was on quicksand legal ground in the US with refusing to pay during free trials anyway. Taylor Swift could have led a revolt against Apple being high handed with royalties the artists are legally owed, sure. But, it was more likely a quiet word from one of their legal team telling Apple’s bean counters they didn’t have a leg to stand on without a lot of extra contracts and legal paperwork they may not already have and weren’t likely to get.
It may make for a nice story to think how a single singer stopped the big, greedy corporation, but most likely all recording labels also expressed unhappiness, but they did it on closed channels. It also make a nicer story the big corporation saw the light from a singer than caved to pressure from other corporations.
I hate to be an optimist but rather than positioning this as ‘Apple got beat up’ perhaps we could look on the positive side.
A recording artist went public with her concerns, largely in the interest of small artists, and Apple responded quickly, positively, and publically.
This is good for recording artists because they get paid even when Apple doesn’t ( as it should be, because the whole 3 month thing helps Apple strategically ).
This is good for apple because they just got a ton of free press for Apple Music at a cost their bank account will easily accommodate.
And – outside of OSNews – it’s all great press!!! Swift was saying that she ‘loves Apple’ even when she was critical of them. Apple tweeted an unconditional mea culpa two days later looking way better the spotify who publically argued with Swift. This could only get better if Swift and Cook had a hug on stage.
You might want to venture beyond AppleInsider and iMore. Every major press outlet has deemed this a major failure on Apple’s part, and it’s a pretty big PR fail.
Are you high? Show me a “major press outlet” that is reporting this as a “major failure” on apple’s part. Everyone is reporting that Apple is reversing course, but press is generally neutral/positive.
As for PR fail, now Apple Music is all over the news again and in a positive light. They listened to artists, they will probably gain a couple of the holdouts like TS, and they’re paying for free trials and paying higher rates to artists than their competitors. Only you could see that as bad news for Apple.
Canada: Positive toward Taylor swift, positive to neutral towards apple.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/taylor-swift-s-biting-apple-letter-is-f…
BBC: Positive towards TS, positive towards Apple (going out of the way to explain how apple mays more than standard rates on an ongoing basis)
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-33220189
Slashdot: Neutral to both parties (look! the bias of the authors isn’t the main feature of the story! Imagine that).
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/15/06/22/126234/apple-to-pay-musici…
Germany: Positive to TS, Neutral about Apple, again explaining the reasoning behind the free trial.
http://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/it/taylor-swift-apple-rea…
Ars: Pretty neutral/positive to both.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/06/apple-caves-to-taylor-swift-wi…
Edited 2015-06-22 14:38 UTC
You have an odd idea of a ‘major PR blunder’. A product launched by a company is now one of the most trending news topics of the day globally! The storyline is that the product will now pay more to artists for participating in the product and that ( implicitly ) artists which reject other similar products will now participate.
Tell me again how this is bad for the company which is marketing this product? Consider reading the Wired article about this; it gives Apple no credit but does acknowledge that it will help the company look good.
PS. I don’t want to sound like I am wearing a tin foil hat but it does seem a little coincidental that this came out on Monday one week before Apple Music goes live. This type of press will dominate the news cycle for at least a few days if not the whole week, followed by next weeks press of ‘Apple Music launches’. If I were marketing that product I would be ecstatic!
PPS. You should consider making a ‘major PR blunder’ that will have a major recording artist draw attention to OSNews while publicly hugging you. It might help!
I ventured far beyond those publications ( which I actually don’t read anyway ) …
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/22/apple-music-taylor-sw…
Their news aggregation project as model after all other MSM is also a bad idea…maybe they’ll have a change of heart there too.
Edited 2015-06-22 13:52 UTC
That was quick, though not very surprising. Losing just a couple artists with Taylor Swift’s mainstream popularity would essentially kill the service.
Why didnt Swift or the other artists complain before they signed the agreement? This seems like Swift coming back after the fact to try to use public opinion to get a better deal. Keep in mind that the artists in this also get a higher percentage of the profits than they do with other streaming services.
dodn’t you hear? Apparently apple had a knife at their throat and was saying Sign Here or we remove everything of your from itunes…
Not true naturally but some PR People did spread that story to embiggen their careers.
Didn’t you hear? Taylor Swift actually didn’t sign the agreement and explained to Apple and the world why she wouldn’t.
Sounds like you just want to complain.
Now that this barrier is lifted, Taylor Swift might still not sign the agreement for other reasons
Actually nearly all her albums were expected to be release on Apple Music. Just not 1989, which hasn’t been released on any streaming service. Apple’s refusal to pay was a convenient excuse but it’s clearly not the real reason otherwise Google Play and others would already have the album.
Most artists don’t negotiate with streaming companies. Record labels negotiate with the streaming companies and the labels pay royalties based on the contracts negotiated between their lawyers and the artists lawyers. Most people don’t get that. When Swift complains about Spotify et al not paying much the problem most likely lies with her contract with the record labels. Spotify has paid out billions of dollars to the record labels. How much of that goes to the artists?
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150204/07310329906/yes-major-rec…
Edited 2015-06-23 18:47 UTC
They were getting zero for 3 months. Not postponed. Just lost.
Turns out that when Swift is on *the other side* of a very similar situation. She is not so very protective of the fruits of labor of another creative profession. Rather, it is completely the opposite.
http://www.diyphotography.net/an-open-response-to-taylor-swifts-ran…
This is apples and oranges in every way possible and I’d be surprised if someone hasn’t already written an `open letter` to Jason Seldon, putting him in his place. It’s one thing to be disgruntled about how things work in your industry, but you discredit yourself the minute you start equating your plight to those who have actual legal rights & entitlements over what’s been produced.
Screw him. That’s how photography *should* work. You take pictures of me or something I created? I should own the rights to it. If you don’t want to take the picture, you don’t have to. Find something better to do with your time.
You miss a lot of thing here.
The contracts have initially been discussed between Apple and the big Majors and at this time, Apple was certainly not discussing much, if at all, with smaller labels and Indies. Convincing the Majors to allow 3 free months was certainly not easy, but it was very important for Apple Music.
Apple Music was only possible with the Majors on board.
Then Apple did simply propose the same terms to everybody. because it was simpler and they see no reason not to do so. And the Majors wouldn’t have been very happy about that.
Then Indies and Taylor Swift were not very happy because the free 3 month are indeed harder to swallow for the small actors. Majors can easily afford it.
I think she is right and Apple just understand that now. Or they were just waiting for such complains.
And now, Apple did change its mind… but not for contracts already signed. So Majors will get no money for the 3 free months and Indies and small labels will.
And as I think Apple is a lot more clever than what you think, I would not be surprised to learn that they did know exactly what would happen: it is just logical.
But now, they do not have to give money to the Majors for the free months, only to the smaller actors. This optimal situation would not have been possible I think with a different scenario.
Edited 2015-06-22 15:45 UTC
Sources please.
http://recode.net/2015/06/21/apple-says-it-will-pay-taylor-swift-fo…
“Cue says he hasn’t talked to any other musicians, labels or publishers yet. Apple will keep the existing royalty rates it has already hammered out with the three major music labels for subscribers, he says.”
Good for Apple. They did the right thing here.
I don’t think this streaming mp3 thing is gonna be around much longer and profit is very hard to come by as is. streaming companies want less royalty to artists, artists rights organizations want more royalty. it does not appear to be sustainable and could be killed by governments like in the 90’s.
what i really wonder is what the next play for consumer music is. apple music is catchup with 2007.
i know Tidal is streaming at 16/44. i know apple takes delivery of any music labeled “Mastered for iTunes” in 24bit resolution.
i also know a company named meridian is trying to replace PCM (the underlying encoding in mp3/WAV/flac) with something that includes DRM and is optimized for streaming. it also requires new DAC’s, which is apple’s preferred way of doing things — end of life the old (all DAC’s that can play PCM) and require their new stuff.
I think apple might deliver a new music format based on this meridian encoding (called MQA), and put the new DAC (with it’s DRM tied to their store/subscription) into their headphones. If you put the DAC in the headphone you can do wireless without any loss of quality, unlike now.
Edited 2015-06-22 18:11 UTC
Current wireless headphone already have a DAC in them. Bluetooth streaming (or any form of wireless digital streaming) transmits digital data (like USB, Firewire, etc) and there still needs to be a DAC in the headphone to convert that data to an analog signal.
Edited 2015-06-23 17:12 UTC
I don’t think so, bluetooth doesn’t have the bandwidth for raw PCM data. I think they have to downsample it again, then another round of lossy compression, I think it’s A2DP protocol to transmit it to the headphones. Maybe it is a DAC in the bluetooth cans but it’s not even given full data to recreate.
Wireless speakers before bluetooth used radio transmitters and receivers.
Also there’s all kinds of timing issues if you go wireless between the speakers. The program will not be recreated properly with the horribly inaccurate timing of wireless.
That’s besides the point. The last part of your original post was phrased on a way that claimed Bluetooth headphones didn’t have a DAC in them. I just pointed out that they all did – you wouldn’t be able to hear any sound if they didn’t. That’s all. I never said anything about the DAC or transfer protocol being adequate or otherwise.
I have to disagree. Streaming companies are here to stay. Many businesses are not profitable at first. Some take many years to become profitable. There are clearly growing pains that need to be worked out.
Sure Apple could create a new format nut the vast majority of people won’t care about the improved fidelity, if there is any, and won’t dump their current devices.
There were many streaming companies in the mid to late 90’s that were put out of business by changes in regulation and royalty rates. I’m not saying “streaming” as a whole is going away, of course not. I think companies like Spotify could and have disappeared because of low profit or changes to the law.
As far as a new audio format, if Apple and Dr. Dre said it sounded better most consumers would follow right along. They have that power.
I like apple for general business and basic production stuff but in some markets they are not that great, and consumer and pro audio are 2 of them. I already know there’s *plenty* that sounds better than apple gear.
The usability key to the new MQA format isn’t overall better sound quality, it’s lower bandwidth requirements for similar quality. They are claiming cd-quality sound at 320k bitrate, which is about a 78% reduction from PCM.
They also claim to pay special focus to the timing of the stereo signal in the compression algorithm (something that dither and traditional mp3 compression does not address), with claims of more realism and depth in the compressed signal, something that caught my attention.
The primary business case for the new encoding is the DRM. They are already dressing it up as provenance by calling the format “master quality”, but make no mistake these files will be a lot harder to bootleg than mp4/wav/flac/cd files.
Did Apple ever say that they were not going to pay artists? I’m surprised the record labels would agree to no payment. I wish Best Buy would offer free merchandise when a new store opens. I’ll bet manufacturers would be cool with not getting paid for items sold.
yes, that is exactly what their plan was.