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Apple U-turns on musicians' pay in wake of Taylor Swift open letter

by Mark Tyson on 22 June 2015, 12:21

Tags: Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)

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At WWDC earlier this month we first heard Apple's plans for Apple Music. It was the centrepiece announcement at the developers conference above other traditional WWDC topics such as new iOS and Mac OS X releases and chat about Apple watchOS2.

Apple wants to pair its iTunes clout with bought-in Beats muscle to bludgeon competitors such as Spotify. To complete its mission it seems to have wanted to make use of the good will of the community of musicians during a three month free trial of the soon to launch service. It didn't want to pay royalties during that three months of aural pleasure it was giving away to Apple Music adoptees...

"We don't ask you for free iPhones"

At the weekend pop star Taylor Swift wrote an open letter to Apple and this seems to have been the catalyst to change the Apple Music artist royalties policy. In the letter Swift explained why she was holding back her album 1989 from any form of distribution by the service.

To start with she said that she thought the lack of royalty payments to writers, producers, or artists for the free trial three months was "shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company". But it was her conclusion that hit home with many commentators; "... it's not too late to change this policy and change the minds of those in the music industry who will be deeply and gravely affected by this," she appealed. "We don't ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation".

As reported by the BBC, last week UK-based independent record label Beggars wrote, in a similar vein to Swift, that it failed to see "why rights owners and artists should bear this aspect of Apple's customer acquisition costs". However it is probably thanks, in the main, to Taylor Swift's 'big clunking fist', that Apple has changed its mind.

A few hours ago Apple's Eddy Cue wrote "We hear you @taylorswift13 and indie artists. Love, Apple." Ms Swift has since replied "I am elated and relieved. Thank you for your words of support today."

Now that their 'demands' have been met it remains to be seen what the mighty Swift and Beggars record label will do about Apple Music.

HEXUS Forums :: 10 Comments

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Posted by Torashin - Mon 22 Jun 2015 12:34
I'm repeatedly stunned at how greedy apple has got since Steve died. Apple used to be a great company, but now their mindless attempts to stockpile all the money in the world and make everything stupidly thin is just disgusting.
Posted by LSG501 - Mon 22 Jun 2015 13:23
Torashin
I'm repeatedly stunned at how greedy apple has got since Steve died. Apple used to be a great company, but now their mindless attempts to stockpile all the money in the world and make everything stupidly thin is just disgusting.
since Steve died… think you'll find it started long before that, their markups have always been considerably higher than most other companies, not to mention companies paying to make items for their products.

Besides this isn't about money grabbing, this is about keeping artists on their streaming service, plenty of artists were against the ‘free period’ due to them not getting any royalties etc. Likely they also want people like the beatles and taylor swift on theirs over spotify etc… neither of which would make me want to join apples streaming service.
Posted by ZaO - Mon 22 Jun 2015 14:37
I don't really care for Taylor Swift's music, but I do like how she uses her platform to point out and fight against some of the crap the modern industry pulls. Good on her for that. That said, it's not all the fault of the industry. People just seem far less welling to pay for music these days. I guess they have to try out different stragies. However, holding back royalties from artists is not on. They pay such a pittance for that as it is…
Posted by Jowsey - Mon 22 Jun 2015 15:33
I was once told (perhaps incorrectly) that an (average) artist or bands income is made of roughly the following breakdown:

10% CD sales and streaming income (the income derived from CD sales and streaming subs is eaten up by the companies themselves.)
20% Merchandise
70% Live gigs and festivals.

And as such, I justify my spending on artists that way. I would rather borrow a CD from a friend and try it or discover someone on youtube/spotify and not give them a penny through CD sales, then, if I appreciate the music enough to listen to it a couple times I'll probably go see them live. If I really like it, I'll buy some merch and make a point of seeing them live as often as possible.
Posted by KeyboardDemon - Mon 22 Jun 2015 15:50
LSG501
since Steve died… think you'll find it started long before that, their markups have always been considerably higher than most other companies, not to mention companies paying to make items for their products.

Apple products come with unrivaled customer care, excellent support and an unbeatable warranty, all of that comes at a cost, it's a part, maybe even a big part of the actual ticket price when you buy an Apple product.

ZaO
I don't really care for Taylor Swift's music, but I do like how she uses her platform to point out and fight against some of the crap the modern industry pulls. Good on her for that. That said, it's not all the fault of the industry. People just seem far less welling to pay for music these days. I guess they have to try out different stragies. However, holding back royalties from artists is not on. They pay such a pittance for that as it is…

I don't like paying for music so I tend to listen to music on the radio where the artists still get paid royalties for my listening pleasure. Unfortunately I don't then have the option to listen to what I want when I want and I have to put up with repetitive adverts and sometimes annoying DJs, but that's a trade off I'm willing to make. I have a small collection of CDs and once had a good many GBs of downloaded music, but made a conscious decision to delete any illegal content and either start a legal collection or simply get by with the radio.

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