This is not about me. Thankfully I am on my fifth album and can support myself, my band, crew, and entire management team by playing live shows. This is about the new artist or band that has just released their first single and will not be paid for its success. This is about the young songwriter who just got his or her first cut and thought that the royalties from that would get them out of debt. This is about the producer who works tirelessly to innovate and create, just like the innovators and creators at Apple are pioneering in their field… But will not get paid for a quarter of a year’s worth of plays on his or her songs.
I’m sure the web will be flooded with slightly differently worded but effectively the same this-isn’t-Apple’s-fault blog posts and comments shortly, but this whole saga does seem like a major punch in the stomach for small and/or upstart artists. They’ve already got it rough in this business, and along comes the hugely powerful Apple, who, despite the incredible riches it has stashed away in tax havens, wrangles even that little bit of coin from them.
Stay classy, Apple.
We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.
I don’t know much about Taylor Swift other than that she’s really popular in the US, but that is one wicked burn.
If you want to blame anybody for this mess, blame the artists who sold their soul to the record labels, and now they’re not getting paid shit because of it. It’s very much possible to make a career in music without the middle men, although I’d say the days of making millions off album sales (for the lucky few that were able to do it) are just about over. That ship has sailed.
If you just absolutely REFUSE to make your music available on streaming services, I wish they could set up a way where you could demo a song once or twice, to see if you like it enough to purchase it. Then, at least your music can still be discovered by those of us willing to seek it out. Otherwise, what else do you have? Radio? Haven’t listened to that in years.
In the old days, the record labels were more useful because without them there was no promotion, radio play or recordings.
With the advance of technology new artists can promote themselves on numerous social websites, TV programs and even host their own websites. Radio play has become less important (we don’t use radio anymore to learn new music) and you can record in your own home with studio quality these days.
That’s why labels are less important and should get less.
For me this is what it is all about – will Apple be just another radio station or really embrace ‘amateur music’ from grounds up?
My 2 cents: if they are just another radio station = epic fail. We don’t need another channel with vetted play lists full of Rihana music. That will tick over anyway.
If they truly try to give people a chance it will be extremelu tough but maybe it might work. Just imagine the Apple DJs get it right and they discover another 100 new artists in the next years? It’s clear there is plenty of talent out there, just nobody knows.
They only thing I am not sure about is the global take on it, I just don’t see a Mongolian song become popular in Ghana or for that matter a German song in Ireland.
How? Dumping the product in iTunes and hoping it will get discovered? Even if you never listen to Radio, your music discovery is controlled by Pandora, Spotify, Google Music, Apple Music etc.
And who knows what algorithms they use to “recommend” songs. How do you know there isn’t some “co-operation” with the labels?
And Radio play isn’t as irrelevant as you think. People who still listen to radio transfer their tastes to streaming, boosting the popularity of label songs there (while on the car for example, most people don’t have multi-GB or unlimited data plans).
And that’s for artists who write their own lyrics and have a band to play the music. Some artists are “products” of the labels. They just put in the voice (and even that is massaged with computers) and everything else, lyrics, music etc is provided by the labels. Here is one of the places the lyrics come from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin_production_discography
How many well-known singers/groups can you identify?
Without the labels providing the lyrics, those singers/groups are nothing.
Edited 2015-06-21 21:10 UTC
Compared to ‘the old days’, I think budding artists have a lot more chance to be discovered.
Examples are Gotye, Adele, Lily Allen, they all owe a lot to the internet.
The classic way is to play a lot on the circuit and hope you gain enough critical mass, much harder.
The link that you provide more or less confirms that a lot of music is manufactured. And I think if Apple goes for that same market it will gain nothing. My hope is that 100s of new artists upload music to Apple and that Apple’s DJs are good enough to sift out the right stuff.
No small task.
But if they can, labels will become even less important and Apple can give artists a bigger cut.
.
Edited 2015-06-22 01:26 UTC
Wrong. An artists career has many more aspects than just getting airplay/stream-played. Apple is neither a label, nor a replacement for a label. Apple is a limited distributor of music, nothing more. Apple is in no position to diminish the role a label plays in an artists career.
Some music styles can be produced in a garage with nothing but a computer.
Others need a professional studio, several musicians, a skilled arranger and audio engineer.
There were also artists involved in cover art, video clips.
There is tour organisation.
Besides the greediness of the majors and Apple, Google and Amazon, having only self-produced musicians doing their gig would tremendously reduce music diversity.
Most books are produced with negligible marginal cost.
Most movies are produced with tens of million of dollars of budget.
Music is in between.
There are amazing songs with nothing but a guitar, there are amazing songs accompanied with a symphonic orchestra.
Self-produced music is like self-produced ebooks: There’s a lot of crap out there you have to wade through to find the few masterpieces that exist. Apple’s goal of music discovery is a noble one, but I agree with Ms. Swift that the execution is flawed. Much like Amazon’s plan to start paying authors by the page turn rather than by the book, it’s indicative of an industry giant that just doesn’t get the big picture.
I really hope they step up to her challenge and decide to pay the artists even during the customers’ free trial period. After all, for Apple to have a loss leader there must be loss on Apple’s part.
Radio play still plays a huge role in the music industry, and yes still in breaking artists and songs. Radio reach hasn’t diminished more than other methods have expanded. Radio still offers targeted markets which continues to be a vital tool.
Yes, technology has advanced to the point that you can easily squeeze studio/professional quality recording capability into your bedroom. But what technology can’t provide you is the knowledge & experience it takes to actually produce studio/professional quality music. For the vast vast majority, their home studios sound exactly like home studios and not million dollar recording studios because the vast vast majority simply don’t have that knowledge & experience.
Saying labels are less important today is hugely misleading. They’re only less important to those artists who have already firmly established themselves. Those artists are a minority. Labels are easily as important now as they have ever been because while things like technology and the internet have opened access to the world of music, it’s also flooded it and pushed the bar seriously higher for serious competitors and their investors.
Taylor Swift is enjoying tremendous success right now. Her career has become what it is in large part because of the kind of backing a major label can provide. If you think you can get anywhere near that using your bedroom studio and internet connection, GOOD LUCK!
You were afraid of users stealing your music if you made it available for purchase in open standards (aka mp3/ogg/m4a) or in open streaming platforms.
Please tell me how that partnership with copy-protected but OS-vendor-controlled streaming platforms (Apple Music) is working out for you.
Edited 2015-06-21 20:49 UTC
Don’t like the terms of the contract, don’t sign it. What’s the bitching about again?
Last I checked you had a choice of whether or not and how to sell your music. Don’t like Apple, don’t sell through Apple.
Get out of debt? Yeah, sure…
What put them in debt in the first place was the labels themselves.
This by paying an advance on royalties to supposedly cover studio rents etc.
But then comes the kicker. This advance comes with all kinds of stipulations about what studios to use etc, and afterwards the labels grab all kinds of fees etc on the sales before royalties are even considered.
Thing is that Swift knows this, because close family is deep in the labels business.
Sorry can’t find the tweet at the moment as im on a work pc, but im sure i saw a tweet from Eddy Cue @ Apple stating they have reversed course and now will pay artists during the free trial period.
edit :- Find this link from MacRumours
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/21/apple-will-pay-artists-free-tri…
Edited 2015-06-22 07:30 UTC
Yeah, well … it was a marketing stunt all along! I just hate how all the news sites report on that kind shit.
Apple gets so much free marketing .. unbelievable.
Do you think that it wasn’t a PR stunt by Ms Swift’s Management team?
If you think that Apple paid her to raise these concerns then come out and say so.
I get a feeling that she hates Streaming full stop. Remember that she took some/all of her warbles off of Spotify.
She probably gets a lot less money from streaming than through a Download/CD/vinyl sale.
how much goes in Record Label ‘expenses’ when IMHO they do [redacted]
Apple knew that this clause would get some attention and media coverage and it costs them next to nothing to remove it and seem like they are the good guys that listen to people and are there for the little guy, when in reality all they care for is marketing and money.
Same thing with so many other App store moves they pulled.
Nope, that is not how marketing works. People in-the-know will remember “Wow! Taylor swift just intimidated a multi-billion dollar company in to doing something!” and “Suddenly Taylor Swift is more powerful than the most profitable company in the world..”
People not-in-the-know will simply not know anything about this.
It is good that Apple changed this so quickly. It is bad that they thought they could get away with this at first.
She’s acting like Apple is stopping all royalty checks. royalties are still coming in monthly from other sources; Radio, TV,bars/clubs, movie studios, Internet music sites, etc.