Cupertino GIVES IN to Taylor Swift, will pay Apple Music royalties Taylor Swift has beaten Cupertino: Apple has backed down in the royalty stoush with the chanteuse and agreed to pay, even during Apple Music customers' free trial period. The singer had boycotted Apple's platform over the issue, withholding her album 1989 and calling the prior policy “shocking, disappointing, and completely …
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"she seems intelligent enough to realise that we actually buy CDs "
For those of us born after 1970, these 'CDs' that 1980scoder refers to are big round things that could store incredibly tiny amounts of music and were sold for £15 each. I'm fairly sure Taylor Swift will never have heard of them.
Well, as Jerry Garcia once said, "Well, you can't please everyone."
I think Apple saw a pile of bad press about how a company with $200 billion in the bank decided it had to screw some musicians out of 3 months of revenue.
Kudos to Ms Swift -- her statement pretty much guaranteed lots of bad press for Apple if they continued their plan to rip off musicians.
Because all too many people seem to think that ethics is for private life, not business life. Which is why I have no respect for those who, having amassed huge fortunes from businesses which behave unethically at every turn, then go on to put large amounts of money into charities. Seems like an attempt to buy absolution for past misdemeanours to me entirely on a par with the mediaveal practice of buying pardons from the church.
Ethics is for life; business is a subset of life - the logic is not difficult, especially not for companies involved in IT.
There is an expectation on corporations to demonstrate growth, growth in sales, growth in profits = growth in shareholder value.
If a corporation has made humungous amount of cash, then it is under pressure to make even more cash from financial year to financial year, lest it should appear that the corporation is no longer showing growth. Even if it still makes a stupidly obscene amount
Pressure.
Apple f***ed up big time on this one, no doubt about that.
I imagine that little gets sanctioned within Apple unless it can be demonstrably shown to be turning a profit, despite their hundreds of billions in the bank.
Example: Apple iCloud comes with 5GB free storage per user. Which, these days, is pretty paltry, especially when you consider that a given Apple user is likely to have more than one Apple device, and Apple certainly try to persuade these users to buy multiple devices. Rather than show a little generosity and bump up that allowance to something far more sensible, like 20GB, Apple are more than happy to bother users with a 79p invoice each month for the privilege.
Which is why I have no respect for those who, having amassed huge fortunes from businesses which behave unethically at every turn, then go on to put large amounts of money into charities. Seems like an attempt to buy absolution for past misdemeanours to me entirely on a par with the mediaveal practice of buying pardons from the church.
It's always good PR but I would say it's fair to bet that the amounts donated to charities by those possessing huge fortunes would be a lot less if those contributions weren't tax deductible.
@Big John
Because it's their MO, as it is with most large corporations these days. Their default position is to squeeze and gouge and dictate and control as much as they can, however they can.
And, seeing as they are a HUGE company with a lot of influence politically and through their market position, they can squeeze and control rather a lot and in any way they want. So that is what they do.
While in NO sense unique to Apple, this is what they are. They aren't about innovation or about user experience or about being in partnership with users or producers or artists or communities - they are about as much profit as possible.
And that's valid - they are a corporation after all - people should just understand that.
Again - this is their way, so it's wrong to suggest it was easy to 'correct' because in their minds, this wasn't an error, it was normal business. Had someone not spoken up like this and forced them to reconsider, it would have stayed as is. It's a change to appease people, not a 'correction' of a bad policy. (From their perspective.)
"...as it is with most large corporations these days. Their default position is to squeeze and gouge and dictate and control as much as they can, however they can."
Much like Ms. Swifts take with Photographers, where she essentially demands that all rights associated with photography of here or her concerts are signed over to her. This is tantamount to Apple demanding the rights to every song of hers that is sold or played through iTunes/Apple music.
Although this prompted Apple to do the right thing, she is not deserving of your respect. She is as much a leech and any corporation.
https://junction10.wordpress.com/2015/06/21/those-in-glass-houses-shouldnt-throw-stones/
It's really simple - offer a free trial if you want, just pay for the product.
If I am a butcher and want to give out free samples then that's my business, but I still have to pay my suppliers.
It's completely reasonable to establish a partnership where you and one of your suppliers work together, such as if (sticking with the butcher analogy) you partnered with a specific local sausage producer who agree to give you a quantity of their produce free so you can offer them as samples for your customers.
What Apple was doing was to tell artists that if they wanted to distribute their music on iTunes then they would have to provide their product for free for a period. If they were a small company and one of many platforms then artists would just go elsewhere. But, with a dominant position in the market, they are able to make sure bold demands and exploit the artists - much the way the big supermarket chains in Australia exploit farmers.
This move from Apple was especially deplorable considering how they set prices and prevent retailers offering specials on i-things.
If I am a butcher and want to give out free samples then that's my business, but I still have to pay my suppliers.
If you're a small butcher then that's exactly right, but if you're a Tesco then you do exactly what Apple tried, and screw your suppliers by getting thern to pay for promotions. Disgusting and unethical bullying behaviour seems to be the norm for dominant businesses in all sectors.
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Apple - "For 3 whole months, you won't get a penny from us"
Artist - "Well screw you! I'm doing ok with Spotify, but I work hard and deserve some credit!"
Royalties People - "Sooooo... play-ment of copyrighted works for free? That makes you *Apple* a pirate radio station or (sharing works without permission) doesn't it?".
I think Apple not paying the artist and her being the popular thing at the present time isn't just the only reason?
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@jake
She is a singer. You know that. Even camped out in the desert with your chillis and your chickens* you know who she is.
If you don't then I really don't know why you are commenting because you obviously didn't read the article, which clearly states that she is a "singer", on her "fifth album" (which is called "1989") and, if the picture accompanying the article is of the person in question (and I concede this is not assured) then she is an attractive blonde female in her early twenties.
As for "who cares what her opinion is", my answer is that, first, her fans do. Taken the provided information that she is on her "fifth album" and can "support [her]self", it is apparent that she is successful and, given the age depicted (early twenties) and the format of the responses, she is clearly of the 'twitter generation'. A sound grasp of modern popular music is not required to conclude that her youth and success suggests she likely has some measure of influence amongst consumers of that generation. Hence the response and hence its delivery - via Twitter, using her name.
Which brings me to the second part of the answer to your question ("who cares?") - apparently Apple does.
* - I was going to say "turkeys" but it didn't have the same ring.
I honestly had no idea. Definitely out of my demographic.
The daughter (~30 YO who reads here, and sometimes comments) called. Her observation: "Lowest comment denominator pseudo-porn tinsel pop. Think early Madonna, but with far less talent".
Out of curiosity, I wasted ten minutes of my life and watched a couple of her tunes, and concur. Worse, 'orrible auto-tune use in so-called "live" performances. Quite narsty, all in all. One wonders at the mindset of TheGreatUnwashed.
@Alan
While I am not suggesting that Ms Swift doesn't actually love Apple, a simple explanation is that butter makes things go a little smoother.
They sure as fuck ain't generous - given their authoritarian control of sales they could EASILY enable far higher wages to be paid for those making the devices.
@Alan
I think that the extra money for Taylor Swift, while far more than others would get, is really negligible for her, considering how much her tours make.
She is young and, despite being very savvy, it is not beyond the realms of the possible to believe that she is still idealistic and really does want to help young, aspiring artists.
The issue is not just the money, however, it's the attitude. There is the idea that music somehow is free - that it should be able to be listened to without having to pay anyone. After all, I can open up Youtube and play a whole album if I like.
As Andrew Orlowski has said in his recent article - the new boss is as bad as the old boss.
And it's not difficult to see why - you make money from paying people less than they are worth so the bigger the gap, the higher the profit. Hard to have a bigger gap than just paying nothing and the ridiculous contracts that musicians are nearly forced to sign by these new masters are nothing short of exploitation.
Welcome to the new world; do you like the curtains?
Tim Cook: Ok, this could potentially be bad if all the artists "pull a Swift". What can we do about it?
Accountants: Meh, just pay them. Give us five minutes of creative accounting and we'll actually turn a profit on this whole thing. Look here, I've already offset half the iPhone 6 sales for last quarter on the tax sheet. By tomorrow we'll have sucked them all dry and we can retire to the island volcano. Muahahahahaha!
Tim Cook: That's ok, you've already done enough. We'll take it from here.
Accountants: Yes Master.
Eddy Cue: Uhh, cool. We'll spin up the PR machine now. [aside to Tim]You know, there are days when they just creep me out.
Tim Cook: Don't sweat it it's a common problem with accountants, they always take the short view. Besides, we've got to keep the volcano a secret until Bird One is finished.
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