Once the paid service kicks in, Apple will pay 72% of revenue, not net, gross, to the artists — minus what the record companies keep.
Historically, the money paid by free services is very tiny in comparison.
Apple is trying to get people hooked on their new service which would increase future revenue for the artists.
http://recode.net/2015/06/15/heres-what-happens-to-your-10-after-you-pay-for-a-month-of-apple-music/
Spotify spokesman Jonathan Prince points out that Apple offers its own free music via its iTunes Radio service, and will offer more via the Beats 1 radio service that it will launch alongside its paid service; Apple will pay music owners a much lower fee for music streamed on those options, which don’t allow them to call up songs on demand. Says Prince: “We pay royalties on every single listen, including trial offers and our mobile free custom radio service, and that adds up to approximately 70 percent of our total revenues, as it always has.”
Apple’s pitch to the music industry, essentially, is that its seven-tenths of a dollar will be worth much more than Spotify’s seven-tenths of a dollar in the long run, because its free service isn’t meant to compete with its paid service, and because it will sign up many more subscribers than Spotify, which says it has 20 million paying users.
That’s a theoretical argument for now. We can start judging for ourselves on June 30.
So once the record companies take care of holdbacks, promotional expenses, production expenses, above the line costs, below the line costs, and double secret costs that would leave the singers approximately nothing.