Taylor Swift boycotts Apple Music over no-pay-for-plays shocker Taylor Swift has come out swinging against Apple's "shocking" decision not to pay musicians or composers a penny during a three-month music-streaming trial period. The pop star took to her Tumblr account today to confirm that she would be withholding her album – 1989 – from Apple Music to show her support for young songwriters …
I'm so glad an internationally recognised artist is standing up for all the smaller artists out there.
It warms my heart that "it's not about her" or her lost revenues.
She makes me believe the world isn't so bad after all and her act of altruism should be awarded, arise Saint Swift.
/sarcasm
I'm sure there's a PR component and genuine annoyance about Apple wanting free samples in this, but -sarcasm aside- she didn't have to do it and there is some risk in publicly calling a company as big and vindictive as Apple out.
It would have been just as easy to call it a loss-leader and stay quiet, then quietly rake in the profits after the trial period.
Does anyone buy these albums after 3 months?
To be honest I'm confused as to why anyone would buy these albums in the first place, call me old fashioned but I prefer real honest music, that which is made without the aid of autotune or formulaic s-hit factor. Don't get me wrong electronica is one of my fave genres however when technology is used to dupe idiots into parting with their cash I draw the line.
@AC it isn't about the likes of Taylor Swift or auto-tuned big names. Their deals are secure.
The argument is over the artists with independent labels, who can't afford to take a quarter year hit on royalty payments.
While she might be doing this to gain some publicity and to make more direct sales (she pulled off of Spotify with her last release ISTR), at least she is making a stand.
If enough big-names pulled their catalogues from Apple over this, they might be able to force a better deal for the indies.
"To be honest I'm confused as to why anyone would buy these albums in the first place"
I can explain it to you; it's really very easy. People would buy these albums because they have likes and dislikes that diverge from yours.
But could you please explain exactly what the fuck your personal likes and dislikes have to do with the fact that she's decided to call attention to a scheme that tends to do the most damage to artists that can afford it least - amongst which might even be some of the musicians that you seem to think are so much better than Taylor Swift.
PS One of the several (shallow) ideas underlying your post is that there's some formula that makes it easy to write hits. You could not be more wrong. Another is that "good music" resides someplace other than in the ear of the beholder, and that you are some sort of objective judge. As Duke Ellington said, "If it sounds good, it is good". Everyone gets to make that judgement for themselves. Neither your dislike of Taylor Swift's music or your need to advertise that fact make you superior in any way to people who do like her. Quite the contrary, actually.
"there's some formula that makes it easy to write hits. "
Yep, there's a formula, and it's documented in a 1988 book, The Manual (How to have a number one hit the easy way). Book content available at http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/
Other routes to number one may be available.
They are obviously not thieves. They have proposed a specific type of contract, and the other parties (the labels and artists) are free to accept or reject that contract. Taylor Swift has rejected it, as is her prerogative, while others will accept it. It is purely an economic and business issue - I don't really see how morality enters into it.
"I'm so glad an internationally recognised artist is standing up for all the smaller artists out there. It warms my heart that 'it's not about her' or her lost revenues. She makes me believe the world isn't so bad after all and her act of altruism should be awarded, arise Saint Swift. /sarcasm"
I'd venture to guess that you're exactly the kind of lousy human being that you accuse her of being.
Well, seeing as Apple have backtracked almost entirely due to the negative publicity from Taylor Swift then good on her. If it takes a multi-millionaire internationally recognised artist to point something out, and be prepared to put her money where her mouth is and boycott a service, to get them to change their stance then she deserves recognition.
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Should we be surprised by it? Or maybe we're just jaded because of the industry wide acceptance of these practices which really only benefit the lawyers.
While I see people standing up for her position, I also wonder how many actually buy music and not pirate it.
Disclaimer: I buy CD's when I want music or turn on the radio. I don't pirate anything.... I believe the artists should be paid and I also believe that the music execs are bunch of crooks who'd cheat their grandmother out of her pension if they could. Come to think of it, there's way too many execs in the IT field who would do the same thing to their grandmother. I think I fall into the "jaded cynic" category.
It's the same scenario at Tesco, the customer sees buy one get one free on prepacked carrots and assumes Tesco is giving you the deal. Not so, Tesco has forced the farmer to supply the carrots to them but one get one free. Holding them to ransom.
Unfortunately the farmer doesn't have the same kind of following on Tumblr as Taylor Swift to highlight the problem.
I dion't know how it works over on the right side of the pond, but here on the left, something like that is a 'loss leader". The store takes the hit but sells something else at a higher price and uses, shall we say, creative accounting for advertising expenses. They generate higher traffic and have more of those infamous impulse buys (especially if they bring their kids). The farmer/distributer still sells the carrots to the store at the same price.
Big companies usually lessen their loss leader by making smaller suppliers suffer.
A reduced rate, or by changing the payment terms (from say 30 days to 120 days), things like that they have the purchasing power to force that on the suppliers but a change in cash flow can ruin a business.
I have seen it working with manufacturers who supply the big chains.
We know about loss leaders. But in the 21st century the clever trick is to pass retail and production costs on to your suppliers of agricultural produce and raw materials, so that what the supplier thought was a good deal for them is less so. Some of it sounds like simply demanding a bribe from your smaller commercial partner for continuing to do business with them, but presumably isn't exactly that because that would be illegal - probably?
Here's an allegation from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30338663
""We will now require you to make an investment payment to support our growth."
As a consumer I have decided not t% support their growth for the time being.
And yes - having the free offer supplied free to shops by the small company that makes the stuff and doesn't have much choice about it, is considered a good wheeze by the retailer - and considered normal. And so is charging rent for space on the best shelves.
Capitalism is literally more horrible than you can imagine.
The free trial is a loss leader for apple and the artists.
Why should only apple be taking the loss?
If apple did pay them during the free trial it would be treated as an advance or as part of an overall deal taking it into account.
Apple may or may not be ripping off artists, but, expecting them to share the loss in a loss leader exercise is no indication either way.
>>I'd have more sympathy for that argument if the decision wasn't unilateral, handed down by one of the richest companies on earth
How is it unilateral? Nobody is forcing the artists/labels to have their music on iTunes in the first place. Opting out is possible, or did you not read the article?
>>So the choice is letting them give it away and not getting paid, or opting out, and not getting paid.
>>Either way sucks.
So you acknowledge that iTunes is profitable for musicians--that is, if they opt out, they're "not getting paid."
In that case, I don't see the problem. Apple is offering musicians a valuable service. They might not like some aspects of it but who cares? It sounds like it must still be mutually beneficial.
Oh.. i dunno, maybe because the content they are relying on the make their (paid) platform a success does not belong to them...
If I ran a computer shop and decided to have a promo where I gave free memory upgrades I wouldn't expect Kingston to ship me free RAM.
Apple are taking a loss to build up equity in a potentially profitable business. That's normal standard business practice. The artists however are being asked to take a loss as if they were business partners, but they aren't being offered a share of any success in the new business.
If Apple were offering a (for example) 50% share of the resulting new music business to the artists who were putting up the main costs (the cost of the music being retailed), they might have a case. But they're not, Apple are asking the artists to "invest" while being offered absolutely nothing in return.
I've got this great business plan. I'm going to ask all my suppliers to "invest" in a new business idea I have. If it fails, they get nothing. If it succeeds, they still get nothing. I can't for the life of me imagine any of them turning that opportunity down.
It's pretty simple. Risk to the company with the highest corporate valuation? Zero (actually a little electricity and some bandwidth they were already going to pay for anyway but is undoubtedly offset by the huge full quarters operating loss tax deduction). Risk to starving artist? Starvation since they won't have any income to offset by the loss.
I'm sure Apple is crying all the way to the bank on this one. Time to start a bonfire and toss in the few remaining iPods.
Great!
I have an entry position for a dynamic young intern willing prove their ability to work towards exacting standards.
You will start on Monday, you will not get paid until after September and only on the condition that your work satisfies my requirements. Your first tasks will be painting the house and mowing the lawn twice a week (of course you have to bring paint, tools, petrol any protective gear and take out a life insurance to benefit my company - just in case you break your damn neck and I have to hire a professional to finish the paint job).
One just can't get staff these days, so I am happy to hear that someone, somewhere is flexible and conscious of the needs of business.
>>If I did a straw poll of nominations for a 'historically progressive and generous company', how many of you would have volunteered 'Apple'?
1. They arguably saved the entire music industry with the iPod/iTunes in the early 2000s, at least from the rampant online piracy that was ruining musicians and labels
2. They provide an effective and popular method for *anybody* to distribute and profit from their own music, esp. small musicians (don't require labels for distribution)
3. Apple only takes 30% of music/media sales and the rest go to the artist/label. This is an unprecedentedly low cut for music distribution.
4. Apple does a significant amount of free marketing for a lot of music via iTunes, for both big and small artists
Apple isn't perfect but it's important to be able to recognize the good things they've done and not just be angry at them and assume that everything they do is greedy and evil and bad.
"They arguably saved the entire music industry with the iPod/iTunes in the early 2000s, at least from the rampant online piracy that was ruining musicians and labels"
No, the music industry were desperate because they did all the attempts to stop a new type of sales and distribution to preserve the old model and the effect was people sharing more and more. 99c per song was a very hard thing to swallow but the labels had no choice, their tactics only screwed them.
>>No, the music industry were desperate because they did all the attempts to stop a new type of sales and distribution to preserve the old model and the effect was people sharing more and more. 99c per song was a very hard thing to swallow but the labels had no choice, their tactics only screwed them.
Uh, okay. This is sort of like if I said "the lifeguard saved a drowning swimmer" and your comeback is "no, that's not right, the swimmer was flailing around as hard as he could and had no choice but to be rescued by the lifeguard."
In other words, I don't see how you're contradicting me.
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What profit margin do HMV and similar record stores make? That's the offline equivalent of iTunes, not the record company. The record company still does the same work as before up to preparing the master copy. Instead of pressing it to a load of CDs and sending them to record stores, they encode it in mp3 and aac format and upload it to online stores such as iTunes.
"What profit margin do HMV and similar record stores make? "
HMV (the UK record store chain) went bust in 2013 and the remains were bought by Hilco, who already owned HMV Canada.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22040237
So I guess the answer is HMV UK didn't make much profit margin.
HMV UK under Hilco seem to be doing OK **so far** (early days); the remains of HMV are said to have made £17M profit in the last full fiscal year:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/24/hilco-directors-share-hmv-payout-bonus
Something along those lines would have generated incredible positive PR for Apple.
Cook is tone deaf when it comes to PR. He gives everyone a U2 album they don't want, he invents this "Music" service, because, er, reasons, or something. he commits Apple to a watch no one really wants, and he expects creative people to supply content for his free trial without bothering to ask them.
This will not end well. It may take a while to get there, but the future is not looking rosy.
No...those companies offer a free trial (e.g. a month) on the hope that you'll find it useful enough not to cancel (or just forget/be lazy about it). They are taking the gamble and financial hit (advertising, bandwidth etc) from that process. Apple is shifting the vast majority of that risk onto the content producers, but it's doing it for longer than the usual 30 days you'd normally expect from a trial period. From their standpoint it's financially sound business strategy, but it's an absolute dick move.
>>Apple is shifting the vast majority of that risk onto the content producers
What "risk" exactly?
Let's look at a venn diagram--
Circle #1: The content producer's music is so crap that the only time anybody would want to listen to it is during a free trial period
Circle #2: The content producer's music is so crap that it gets no marketing value out of the increased "airplay" the song is getting during said trial period
Circle #3: The content producer would have sold a bunch of songs during said trial period
I agree that if you're at the intersection of all these circles, it would be pretty bad for you financially. But it seems unlikely and if your music is that crap anyway then maybe you should consider a different line of work.
Odd, I don't recall Spotify and their ilk being particularly generous with the ol' moolah either, and their free ('ad-supported') offer was no three-month lure either. They're also famous for not paying much, (if anything), to the artists; it's the publishers who get the dosh.
Apple still offers their conventional iTunes music "buy to own" music download service. Apple Music merely offers an additional method of getting access to music. And – oh, look! – Ms. Swift's oeuvre is still available in the iTunes Store! Including "1989 (Deluxe)" at a mere €11.99! So, she seems quite happy to take the Apple shilling when it suits her.
As others have pointed out, Apple aren't forcing artists or publishers to take part in the free three-month opening. Ms. Swift's complaint would be more valid if Apple were going to offer her catalogue of music for free *without* her permission.
Apple may have trialed the idea of forcing artists into the deal. Google about "Anton Newcombe of the band Brian Jonestown Massacre" and Apple threatening to pull their music from the iTunes store if they don't sign on with the new music-streaming. Apple has yet to deny doing it that I can't find on the net so far.
"Odd, I don't recall Spotify and their ilk being particularly generous with the ol' moolah either, and their free ('ad-supported') offer was no three-month lure either. They're also famous for not paying much, (if anything), to the artists; it's the publishers who get the dosh."
How much a particular distribution partner pays is a different issue, but in terms of Spotify not paying artists the response is kinda "Well no s***!".
Unless the artist is a true 'indie' (rather than the genre of music that's somehow gained that title in recent times) then surely that's one of the things that the labels and publishers do? It's down to the agreements between the artist and their publisher as to how much the artist is paid. The chain is customer > retailer/distributor > publisher/label > artist & associates.
Which is all pretty much the same chain as it in any industry: the money starts at the punter's end and after everyone's had their cut it ends up at the producer of the raw material. Or do you think farmers are paid directly for the carrots you buy and then give a cut of that back to the supermarket...?
"I don't recall Spotify and their ilk being particularly generous with the ol' moolah either"
I don't recall Spotify having a huge bond issue in the US so they could pay their shareholders dividends without having to pay tax on the cash which was sitting outside the US (see also Naughtyhorse's post).
I don't recall Spotify being invited before a House committee in the US and being asked where they were resident for tax purposes. I do recall that happening to Apple, and I do recall that they answered that they weren't resident anywhere for tax purposes.
Carry on.
Lets not blur the subject matter here.
This is not music and will always be crap.
If someone wants to pay for this crap, go for it, if someone wants to download this crap, go for it, if you actually like this crap then please find a nice big hole to have a shit, once you're done eat that shit and when you're done with that shit go and check out kanye wests toilet.
The last taylor swift I saw made a quick suit, ironic really
@AC
My counter-proposal: if you don't like this music (or think it doesn't even qualify) then just don't listen to it.
I don't like a single piece of music that I have heard from this artist. This is hardly surprising because I am a male in my mid-thirties and not, as is the case for much of her audience, a girl in my teens. But why this should disqualify it from being considered good music or music at all, is beyond me.
And this is utterly irrelevant anyway.
Apple are profiting from other peoples' work and not compensating them for that. For a company that takes a cut of everything and so tightly controls sales and prices of their kit, it is very much a greedy, arrogant move.
A free trial could actually work well for artists like Taylor Swift but for those that are new and not well-off, it is just plain mean.
Back when there was effectively one phone company in the USA, there was a saying: "We're Ma Bell. We don't have to care." This attitude always develops as a company thinks it has the world by the short and curlies. Microsoft? Comcast? Your friendly national government? Of course it applies to Apple.
I once had a new manager bring in a coffee cup that had printed on it: "Me Boss. You Not." I soon had another new manager...
Sadly, Apple cannot be swept under the rug quite as easily as that for having a BAD ATTITUDE! It is interesting when people of the calibre of Swift do rub Apple's nose in it. Apple, we all know that you ARE the 900 pound gorillla... You don't have to act like it. Its not like paying people fairly for their labour is going to bankrupt you.
Forbes brands: Evil Microsoft is worth $69.3B vs apple's $145.3B... Google is ranked 3rd at $65.6B
So, MS' closest competitor is Google (and wow is it close!).
MS can easily play the "good guy" here - it's the only economically viable play - this does not mean they care/are any better than apple. Doesn't 'iPhone' make more money than all of MS combined? That's why zune/win8/Nokia epic fail. I haven't any stats on 'xbox music' but I'm pretty sure it will be laughable when compared to iTunes... or even YouTube...
She's now questioning whether moving away from Spotify was such a great idea ?
With them she at least made some money, with Apple she's guaranteed to not be paid for the first three months...
Troll, because i would love to get a chance to ask her that on camera, live, with no delays.
For anyone actually interested in this, Faza at The Cynical Musician has something to say about this matter, and not what I would have expected.
His basic idea is that musicians should grant Apple a royalty-free window for the sake of insuring that Spotify has some serious competition in the streaming market.
For those of you without ADHD or similar, you can find his opinion at http://thecynicalmusician.com/2015/06/apple-musics-free-trial-period-a-lesson-in-windowing/
Can I play devil's advocate?
We have an international artist (subject to interpretation) who takes exception to a company not paying her and her team (aka record label) for her contribution to society (aka zero) who then pleads for the lesser artists and is only doing it for them.
I wish I was so self-serving...
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