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Apple Music and Labels Investigated in Two States
- baldfat 11y agoI hace a strong Anti-Apple bias BUT I don't think anything will come from this. This is just the AG of NY and CT making sure Apple knows they are looking at them every time they make a deal.
- plorg 11y agoPerhaps not, but to me this seems similar-enough to the Apple Books/Amazon suit that, if substantiated, it may well cause trouble for the company. E.g. if Apple went to the labels and said, "we would like you to sign on to our subscription service, and we would like you to cease allowing [Spotify,Rdio, etc] to stream your music on a free tier, because we think this will force prices higher", the "force prices higher" may look like an antitrust violation, since the company is using its market position (and not its supply chain or volume etc.) to shift (or, say, "manipulate") the price of a consumer good.
- JohnTHaller 11y agoIt was already pretty widely reported that Apple was trying to get Big Music to kill Spotify's free tier as an anticompetitive measure. And it fits in well with the standard Apple playbook if you look at previous music deals, ebooks, etc.
- baldfat 11y agoI think you might be right. I didn't think about them being stupid enough to actually say that in official circles.
- sdalfakj 11y agoHow do you, as a wannabe monopoly, do business with a monopoly without colluding with a monopoly?
- JohnTHaller 11y agoPressuring a monopoly to harm your competitors isn't necessary to do business with said monopoly.
- msabalau 11y agoDon't engage in price fixing?
- josteink 11y agoWhile I agree apple is a significant and big actor, in what way are they a monopoly?
- minthd 11y agofrom the article: """Last month, Stephen Cooper, the chief executive of the Warner Music Group, the smallest of the three majors, warned that “before people conclude that freemium should be burnt at the stake, we should think very carefully about the consequences.” """ How do you guys/gals see the "consequences", preferably with details of how it's gonna happen ?
- beggi 11y agoI'm thinking he's referring to piracy, as in if you take away streaming with ads people that aren't willing/can't afford to spend $9.99/month for subscription will resort to pirating music.
- ddingus 11y agoYup. And they've been down this road before, starting with Napster back in the day. At that time, the labels were offered a very serious and consistent amount of money, with tons of growth locked in. Was the dawn of broadband in the US, and Napster had 40 million users, many of whom would have paid some monthly amount without thinking hard about it. They killed that, saw the growth of many different distributed schemes. iTunes brought many back to the fold, and regular, common sense, moves to add value back to the process saw more people paying and fewer pirating. If he's thinking about the consequences, he's right. Remove AD driven streaming, which is basically the replacement for aging and increasingly irrelevant FM radio, and people will just start sharing hard again.
- choppaface 11y agoOr use YouTube-- they're good but not perfect at takedowns, a lot more reliable and consumer-friendly than torrents, and the labels have a much smaller chance of winning against Google.
- remarkEon 11y ago> Last fall, the singer Taylor Swift removed her music from Spotify in a dispute over its free version. What's the tldr version of this? She wasn't getting enough of the revenue?
- untog 11y agoBasically. Though it is a pet peeve of mine that they refer to "Taylor Swift" as having done this, as if she was sat at the Spotify admin interface deleting albums. It was her record label that did it - a company that, by coincidence I'm sure, is looking for a buyer.
- VieElm 11y agoWell she made public comments about it. She basically said something about if people value the music they like they should pay for it. So it wasn't just the label, Taylor Swift was involved.
- cbd1984 11y agoAs a spokesperson for the label?
- ethanbond 11y agoYou're really that skeptical that an artist who has been dominating pop stations for years is upset that more and more of her listeners are moving to a nearly revenue-less distribution stream?
- cbd1984 11y agoAs a spokesperson for the label?
- teh_klev 11y agoSee: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/taylor-swift-scott-borchetta-spotify-20141108 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/taylor-swift-scott-bo...
- Oletros 11y agoAndroid version of Apple Music not having a free version like the iOS/OS X/Windows versions can be another factor in that probe?
- Moto7451 11y agoThere's nothing to indicate that the Android version will have any difference in the content available. If you check out the Apple Music membership site it shows Android as a fully fledged member when the software itself is released in the fall[1] [1] http://www.apple.com/music/membership/ http://www.apple.com/music/membership/
- Oletros 11y agohttp://www.apple.com/it/music/membership/ http://www.apple.com/it/music/membership/ http://www.apple.com/es/music/membership/ http://www.apple.com/es/music/membership/ http://www.apple.com/uk/music/membership/ http://www.apple.com/uk/music/membership/ > *Apple Music for Android features are limited to paid members only.
- jug 11y agoIn other words, that should mean that either Apple will make their Beats One station exclusive to paid members if they use Android, or that this radio station will not be part of the app so that the app essentially becomes paid only. Only that feature and the non-music parts of the artist pages (in which case their websites and Facebook pages are probably far more substantial in content) have been announced to be free.
- pcr0 11y agoI don't recall seeing that anywhere. The app should be free everywhere, they're charging for the subscription.
- Oletros 11y agoAndroid version won't have the free tier that the other systems have
- b1daly 11y agoThis is just stupid. Aside from the fact that the cost of access to music is at an historical low, there are vastly more important issues that I would love to see the the AGs investigate. The scandalous treatment of African Americans is a bonafide crisis. Where are the indictments of the many individuals responsible for the unjust imprisoment and torture of Kalief Browder? This happened in Eric Schneiderman,s own state! The military-industrial-political-financial-complex is bursting with targets for reform. Don't even know why I'm posting this here, but once in a while I feel motivated to share my thoughts...
- cskau 11y agoYou're arguing that this isn't important simply because there are other important issues out there. Surely two important issues can co-exist?
- beedogs 11y agoI love when the Apple apologists throw out stupid stuff like this. It's as if you think state attorneys are some solitary old man in a room, capable of doing only one thing at a time.
- datashovel 11y agoI get the feeling margins have gotten so slim in the music industry (at least for the big labels) that they feel they need to make a big play. Apple, with their almost iconic relationship with the music industry, seems like the right move to them. What I think they don't realize is at this point (IMO) it's probably going to end up being a fruitless effort. They're competing with empowered independent artists, whom alot of times only have to earn a paycheck to pay themselves, who simply love music and don't care about fame or becoming wealthy from their efforts. Most of them care about making great music and making a modest living doing so.
- josteink 11y agoIf the margins are getting slim, it's only because the music industry has gotten so big and bloated compared to the size it naturally should have in a digital landscape. They've always insisted everyone else needs to change and play according to their tune, but I think they may (finally) have realised that the ones who has to change is themselves. And that will have to be a change for something significantly slimmer.
- k-mcgrady 11y ago>> "If the margins are getting slim, it's only because the music industry has gotten so big and bloated compared to the size it naturally should have in a digital landscape." The margins got slim because people were able to get music for free. Some still want to pay but they don't want to pay a lot so the industry has to take what it can get and offer streaming.
- josteink 11y agoPeople don't want to pay much 1. because they're cheap, but also 2. because they realise that digital distribution is a near 0-cost business. The music industry can't pretend it's still offering the same value to artists and customers as it did in the pre-internet age. They haven't adjusted to that, and that's their error.
- 11y ago
- beedogs 11y agoApple's a lot shittier of a company than many people seem to want to give them credit for here.
- skrowl 11y agoThere's acting shitty, then there's acting illegally. This may be the later. That said, you're unlikely to get very many people on HN to admit that post Steve Jobs Apple acts shitty. There are still a lot of people here drinking the kool aid. Seriously though, grats on getting pinned tabs in Safari and transit directions in iMaps.