Apple’s Swift U-turn: artists will be paid during Apple Music free trial

Geek.com ^ | June 22, 2015 | Matthew Humphries

[Mad Dawgg]

Apple has been forced to do a U-turn on its Apple Music service, and it’s thanks in large part to the actions of Taylor Swift and a negative PR campaign she managed to kick off against the company.

Apple Music will launch with a 3 month free trial for any person signing up to it. The problem is, Apple had decided and agreed with the largest music publishers that no royalties would be paid on songs played during this free trial period. Many artists were angry about this. While the major labels could take the hit, independent and new artists could not. Apple refused to budge on the issue, that is, until Taylor Swift got involved.

[Mad Dawgg]

Taylor 1 Apple 0

[BlackAdderess]

Good for Swift :)

[Sgt_Schultze]

Apple didn’t want to be the next former “lover” to be savaged for eternity in a Swift pop song.

[KC_Lion]

Taylor had a Blank Space (baby) and she was going to write Apple's Name.

Don't want that! It's a Death List!

[Norm Lenhart]

Alanis Morisette she ain’t. But yea.

(Ever notice that you never heard about any males in Morisette’s life after all her success?)

[BunnySlippers]

You mean, “except her husband” and father of her child.

[Norm Lenhart]

Yea but how often did you see her or hear about her in the news/gossip rags? And before there was a husband and kid there was about zero that I recall. Just the same story about the full house guy over and over.

[RayChuang88]

Swift has one thing on her side: she's one of the very few artists whose physical album disc sales in recent years actually exceeded one million copies (the album 1989 has sold five million copies since its release in November 2014). As such, she has the public and financial clout to make a demand like this.

[max americana]

Huh? How come our designated favorite Apple fanboy didn’t post this article? ;P

[SamAdams76]

I’m sure he’ll ping the list later. He does that for all Apple articles he finds here, pro or con. We can’t expect him to be the one to post everything. I’m sure he has a day job.

[MeganC]

Why should she let a multi-billion dollar company rip her off? Good for Taylor telling those liberals to shove it!

[Swordmaker]

Apple says that the artists are going to be paid during the 90 day demo period. . . some take this as being a "caving in" but it actually looks as if it was their original intent policy because Eddie Cue stated that "We hear you @taylorswift13 and indie artists. Love, Apple", "#AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming, even during customer’s free trial period", and "Apple will always make sure that artist are paid,” not that they have changed the policy which was that Apple would be paying artist on a 70/30 split—with Apple taking the short end—of all revenue generated by the Apple Streaming Radio system on play counts, a far better return to artists than what is paid by the other systems. All of this kerfuffle was based on rumors about the first three month free period and the potential that there would be no revenues during that period and the demand from some artists that they get their usual full rates while the offerings may not be generating full revenues yet, even though listeners could start buying subscriptions from day one, which is REVENUE which they WILL be sharing!

Apple has NEVER stiffed the artists, creative talents, programers, or authors of the content the iTunes and App Stores sells, having passed on over $30 BILLION in revenues to developers, authors, and artists. Why should Apple start "stiffing them" now? SHEESH! — PING!

Apple Streaming Music
Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Mad Dawgg]

[Jane Long]

You mean she didn’t ask Apple to donate the royalties to #AllLivesMatter? Or, towards the National Deficit? Or, Globull Warming? How capitalistic of her.

She had a chance to start a new trend...

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

-— Apple didn’t want to be the next former “lover” to be savaged for eternity in a Swift pop song -—

LOL

Anyway, Taylor is right, and remarkably sane considering her success and her peers.

[Swordmaker]

Huh? How come our designated favorite Apple fanboy didn’t post this article? ;P

Sam's right. I post only about 35% of the Apple related articles. . . pinging the group to almost all of them. The rest are posted by other Freepers. Some are even posted by members of the Anti-Apple hater Brigade. I will usually even ping the group to those, unless they are posted for the mere purpose of slamming Apple or Apple users.

This Taylor Swift kerfuffle is all about a misunderstanding by her and several other artists not realizing that Apple would be paying them for the plays generating subscription signups during the trial period, just not immediately. The revenue has to be realized before payment, but it would have been paid. Now Apple will pay in advance of realization.

I can understand how the indies would want to be paid "Right Now", rather than "pie in the sky" later, but this is Apple, not a promise breaking fly-by-night producer; they would have been paid when the revenues were actually collected. It was probably an error to use standard business practice of "accrual based accounting", when these indies were expecting "Cash based accounting", but Apple actually charges credit card transactions when they start providing services, not when someone provides the card number. Subscriptions would not start for 90 days. . . at which point the revenues would be booked and the trial period artists would have been paid. Taylor Swift want her money, cash, NOW.

Apple is now merely going to advance that by cash accounting, charging it against future revenues. No change in policy of paying the artists and never intended to not pay them. The basic question was when they would receive their payments.

[avenir]

Cool, like Tom Petty before her standing up to the record company and winning. Rarely happens.

[Mad Dawgg]

Apple had already agreed to share revenue from the new Apple Music service once users start paying a $10-a-month subscription fee for the service, which it plans to launch June 30. But the technology giant wasn't planning to pay artists and labels directly for the use of their music during the free, 90-day trial period that it's offering to get fans to try the service.

That changed quickly Sunday, after Swift posted an open letter to Apple opposing the lack of royalties during the free period, and declaring she'd be withholding her latest album "1989" from Apple Music because of it. Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue reversed the company's trial-period terms, which had gone out to thousands of independent labels, including Swift's Big Machine Label Group, after the technology giant reached a deal with major label groups Universal, Sony and Warner in early June.

Apparently Apple never told those independents of your claims...

[Swordmaker]

Apparently Apple never told those independents of your claims...

Read the negotiated contracts, it's in there. Apple was going to pay the artists after the start of subscription at 72% instead of the historic 70% to compensate for the delay in payment during the trial period (that is COMPENSATION, in the long term, that is far more compensation than they would get under the normal system). . . and pay for the trial period counts when the revenue stream started. You just have to have Apple acting wrong, don't you? SHEESH!

[Mad Dawgg]

So they were going to not pay them for 3 months. Now they are. But you claim the bump of 2% over the normal fee would have garnered them more.

Yeah OK then how come they caved and say they will now pay them for the three months?

Sorry but your claims don't match the facts as presented in the stories posted.