Apple’s impulsive response to Swift stands in stark contrast to their treatment of indie app developers, who have been lobbying Apple for almost seven years, requesting Apple reform policies in the App Store to no effect. In particular, Cue’s use of the word “indie” can only be described as a callous slap in the face given the circumstances that indie developers have been facing.
iOS application developers are expendable, and have zero reach. Taylor Swift is unique, and has a quarter metric frickton of reach.
Do the math.
Should just write everything in Apple’s new Taylor Swift coding language, problem solved 🙂
Unsure about that :
http://petapixel.com/2015/06/22/an-open-response-to-taylor-swifts-r…
I think it’s deeper. Music “indies” are artists in the exec’s eyes at Apple. App developers are just programmers. It’s programming and our art they have contempt for, and it’s shown in more than just their treatment of indie app developers – have a look at their programmer employee price fixing scandals.
I think Thom is right about reach.
Nobody knows these programmer guys, Taylor Swift on the other hand… everyone knows her.
Then again I don’t know anything about her music.
I just follow her on Twitter 😉
https://twitter.com/swiftonsecurity
Edited 2015-06-23 21:12 UTC
Before all this hoo-hah on tech sites, if you mentioned her name I would have thought you were talking about some species of bird.
Edited 2015-06-23 22:20 UTC
Apple App Store revenues exceed Apple Music Store revenues
http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Screen-Shot-2014-0…
How about Indie revenue?
Capitalism isn’t about the actual value of the product in terms of labor, resources, or impact. It’s about clout, and people get that, mostly by heredity, in radically unequal portions. Most of the apps out there are useless, but some of them are seriously important – and yet, who has clout? A pop-country singer from a rich background playing at being farm girl?
Taylor Swift deserves to make a good living with her music and stand up for herself, but not so much more so than app developers.
Edited 2015-06-23 20:54 UTC
If there was such a thing as a superstar coder, and Apple pulled this stunt when launching a similar service model for iOS AppStore, same thing might happen.
Bottom line – Apple is trying to enter a new business model, but one it has serious competition in. Last thing they need is any kind of negative press. Even if 100% of the people signing up would avoid Taylor Swift’s music, it is still something very visible to them. Whether they care about the free trial or not, they have plenty of other services to use instead, so I guess they might look elsewhere. Apple needs to hook them in to their eco system immediately and get as much good feedback in the press as possible to succeed.