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For everyone suggesting that artists are simply being greedy or unreasonable in expecting Apple to pay them during the trial period, I'd encourage you to consid

by w4 11y ago

For everyone suggesting that artists are simply being greedy or unreasonable in expecting Apple to pay them during the trial period, I'd encourage you to consider the hypothetical I posted in the last thread about Apple Music's 3 month trial. It might help contextualize the artists' and labels' complaints: > Tomorrow, Apple announces that it will be introducing an "App Store Subscription." For $9.99/month users will receive unlimited access to all apps on the App Store. Developers will receive a share of each user's subscription payments in proportion to app usage. Apple simultaneously announces a 3 month free trial for all App Store accounts, and states that it will be making no payments to developers during that trial since users are not paying for it. I, personally, would ditch iOS development for Android in a heartbeat if that happened. I can't blame musicians for having a similar reaction.

taylorwho 11y ago
The only thing swift about her "music" is how quickly/swiftly listeners turn off when her wailing comes on. And Taylor? Pah! She needs a tailor - have you seen some the crummy outfits she wears?
pmorici 11y ago
That sounds like an amazing offer. who wouldn't want to trade a one time free or 99 cent payment for recurring revenue.
- sanswork 11y ago
  Well you have to split that $10/month with all the other apps that the user accessed that month(on average). So it's quite likely that your somewhat successful app wouldn't even reach the 99 cents anymore let alone 99 cents per user.
  - w4 11y ago
    Right - and now further imagine that your app is actually making decent money before the introduction of the subscription model (like Taylor Swift does off records). How pleased with this arrangement are you going to be? I'd posit not very.
  - sehugg 11y ago
    This is a pretty successful model in some countries: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/kddi-smartpass/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/kddi-smartpass/
    - sanswork 11y ago
      It says it is limited to 500 apps so compared to 1.4m in the app store less people to spread the money around to. It also sounds like they removed the option of using the Android store from this quote "saying that consumers would get confused if there were two app stores — Google Play and a branded KDDI store". So there really isn't the option of their users going to a different system.
- danieldk 11y ago
  Of course, music works completely differently. I have many albums that I only listened to ten times or so. In the old model, they have still received a fair share of $10, in the new model, not so much. I can easily understand why artists want to opt out. I am also not sure about Apple's model for the distribution of subscription fees. But e.g. in Spotify's model, it is largely large acts benefitting from indies, rather than the other way around. http://lit.vulf.de/spotify-so-little/ http://lit.vulf.de/spotify-so-little/
  - StringyBob 11y ago
    That link perfectly describes my concern with subscription systems. If Apple distribute the royalties calculated per-user rather than based on (total royalties / total number of listens system wide) I'll move over from spotify, as it will reward the bands I like more than the current system. I like that spotify pays royalties from free accounts, I dislike that I am effectively subsidizing this as a premium user. However, at the moment I am more comfortable with this than apples '3 months no royalties' system. Another interesting point is that for a music subscription services, there is very little keeping users tied to one provider - all I need is the ability to export my playlists. I wonder if spotify's revenue will collapse for 3 months, but if they can be better than apple, they can get it all back 3 months later.
    - reagency 11y ago
      You aren't subsidizing anything. You are paying market price for a product. The seller does bizdev how they choose.
      - StringyBob 11y ago
        Technically true. I think for the arts this is something of an unusual case I'd describe more as an emotional than a financial transaction. I'm paying for something that I could easily get (illegally) for free. My allegiance is to the music and musicians, not to apple, spotify or anyone else providing distribution, as such 'supporting the type of music I like' is a very strong selling point, (not strong enough for me to use Tidal though!) I presume Apple are trying to establish differentiation through the 'radio' service, but since the baseline market requirement is the ability to listen to practically anything all-you-can-eat, it'll be hard for them to achieve it there.
- clord 11y ago
  It might help prevent crap-tastic apps on the store because it changes the incentive structure. If the subscription is doled out in proportion to time spent in-app, the incentive on developers would be to maximize engagement time, which might be a good thing for users. For paid apps such a scheme would be a problem since it would likely reduce income, but as a way to get money to fund free apps, not a bad idea actually.
  - glesica 11y ago
    > If the subscription is doled out in proportion to time spent in-app And think of all the cool new laborious, overcomplicated, and time-consuming UI designs we could look forward to!
    - schuylerlarson 11y ago
      Great just more apps for me to not use... It's not like people won't try to make nicer, simpler interfaces like they already do.
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    > If the subscription is doled out in proportion to time spent in-app Then what stops shady slot game app developer from keeping his app running in the background 24/7 and trashing the commons (or private garden, I guess)? Technical solutions can probably go a decent amount of the way, but there will always be a work-around...
    - StringyBob 11y ago
      Time spent in an app is certainly not the best measure of value. Ideally, a user could be given some flexibility to 'upvote' subscription payment allocation to apps that have the most value to them.
  - chongli 11y ago
    How do you measure time spent "in-app"? Does the app have to be in the foreground or merely running in the background? If it has to be in the foreground then how does that help apps that mainly run in the background such as RunKeeper? If it's allowed to run in the background and still get credit then won't that create an incentive for battery-draining crap that users struggle to shut down?
- w4 11y ago
  You're missing the main thrust of the hypothetical (arguments about how "amazing" the offer is aside): > Apple simultaneously announces a 3 month free trial for all App Store accounts, and states that it will be making no payments to developers during that trial since users are not paying for it. That's a terrible offer no matter how you cut it.
taylorwho 11y ago
You seem to be confusing Taylor with musicians.
shimfish 11y ago
Except how long do you think it would take Google to move to app subscriptions if that happened?
- Justsignedup 11y ago
  There'll always be someone making an app. You can stop producing good apps, but since most apps are already free w/ ads or are a free addon to an already existing service it probably wouldn't matter for the majority of apps people use :(
- w4 11y ago
  I'm not so sure. I think it'd largely have to do with developers' and consumers' reactions. If Android was suddenly ground zero for innovative, high quality apps, due to Apple alienating developers, I don't think Google would choose the same model. Indeed, you can see Google attempting to attract developers to its ecosystem and away from Apple's in some of their recent developer policy changes (no app review times, etc). But now we're getting way off topic. :)
  - cwyers 11y ago
    Google also knows full well that they don't own their platform the way Apple does - developers would just sell directly and have users sideload, or move to Amazon's app store.
imteamcoltra 11y ago
It's hard because music you can actually track how many people are listening to what songs and how much of the song they listen to and compensate accordingly. If they were able to track how often a person used an app then I don't think that would be too bad except for extremely niche apps which are usually enterprise already. I would take a smaller payment if I got paid $0.01 for three minutes my app was open on a phone, rather than charging $0.99 (or even $2.99)... It depends on the app though
- lighthazard 11y ago
  That seems wrong.. you can easily track app usage. Apple and Google have insane amounts of information about the devices and apps being used on each device.
- StringyBob 11y ago
  I don't think current subscription systems make the best use of this data. I personally believe that royalties should be calculated per individual paying user account rather than aggregated over total playbacks in the service. In other words, If I only listen to 'my favorite niche band' in a month, but don't use the service much, it's unlikely that they will see anything near the full possible share of royalties from that months $10. The system instead is biased to musicians whose fans use the system most heavily on loop - ironically more likely to be taylor swift type pop megastars. [edit - explained more clearly by http://lit.vulf.de/spotify-so-little/ http://lit.vulf.de/spotify-so-little/] Anyone know how apple will compare on royalties after the 3 month period compared to spotify? I've been a spotify premium subscriber since 2009, but would move to a system that meets my definition of equitable.
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    This is one reason I pretty much just leave classical music on in the background 16/7. I'm absolutely not abusing the service -- I'm paying a subscription for exactly the right to do this. And, it helps the artists who get most shafted by the aggregate play count payout model.
sehugg 11y ago
I, personally, would ditch iOS development for Android in a heartbeat if that happened. But what if you had just ditched Android (i.e. Spotify) last year after publicly complaining about its usurious terms?
- w4 11y ago
  Then it's back to the web (or album sales and touring in Swift's case).
mikehearn 11y ago
There are a lot of economic differences between music and apps (e.g. price range, labels negotiate on behalf of artists, music has dozens of outlets versus 2-3 for apps, etc), but my hope is you would still analyze the economics before ditching. If you ultimately would stand to make more money through subscriptions in the long term, despite losing three months of revenue, then it would make sense to stay, right?
- blankenship 11y ago
  There are a lot of economic differences between music and apps Are there? (At least for independent musicians?) From my experience, it seems like a decent comparison—you can make an app or album for $2000 or $200k.
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    It seems like the more difficult barrier to this model is the technical difference between music and apps. In order for a piece of music to play in the background 24/7, the user has to pretty much explicitly allow it. In order for an app to do the same thing, the user just has to grant it enough permissions.
  - tajen 11y ago
    You can sell support for software and usage for an app. There's very few recurrent revenue in music.
    - edanm 11y ago
      Sure there is - live shows.
      - sdenton4 11y ago
        Yeah, but touring has a crazy pile of expenses associated, in addition to all the unfortunateness of being on the road for as long as you want to make money at it. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/11/25/band-just-finished-28-day-tour-made-much http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/11/25/band-ju...
brownbat 11y ago
Agree for different reasons. I don't think they're being greedy, any more than I think users are being entitled when they wait for steep discounts on Steam games or refuse to pay .99 for an app someone worked really hard on. Price trends towards marginal cost, and marginal cost for digital IP is zero. That's true if everyone on both sides is a group of angels, devils, spoiled brats, or automatons.
zwily 11y ago
Pay-per-usage of apps (similar to streaming music) might be really interesting. Of course, games already kind of do that via IAP and it absolutely sucks, so who knows.
- Mahn 11y ago
  The way things are going, with a couple mobile games doing billions, and hundreds of thousands of others doing next to nothing, non-IAP pay-per-usage in app stores may well come sooner than most people expect.
  - bphogan 11y ago
    Before Photoshop went subscription-based, I assumed they would have gone the IAP route. For example, need a blur tool? Add it for 1.99. Or buy the Retouching Pack for $25.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  Pay-per-usage means that apps which are by nature both critical & valuable but also infrequently used, get no money...
makeitsuckless 11y ago
What makes musicians sound more greedy or unreasonable than most is the generally passive attitude towards the innovation necessary to sustain their own income. They expect Apple, Spotify, Pandora etcetera to take all the risk (including the major risk of being unilaterally torpedoed by those same artists), do all the upfront investment and then whine about not getting a big enough piece of the cake. Taylor Swift is being an outlier here in the respectful way in which she communicates. And she knows it, that's why she chooses her words very carefully. Most of these artist just bitch and whine about their percentage, ignoring the fact that, with antiquated copyright laws firmly on the side of the music industry, technology firms are taking quite insane risk in their attempts to innovate the way music connects to the listeners. If they hadn't, sales of music would have totally flatlined by now and those artist would be way worse off.
- Beltiras 11y ago
  I suspect that this copy is something her PR agent wrote, even if she may have contributed the sentiment.
- sdenton4 11y ago
  It's disgusting really; there's so little risk in being a musician after all. Won't someone think of the poor capitalists?
biggy3100 11y ago
Culture has shifted and now piracy is not looked at as a real crime, but a passage of rite. These streaming services came around as an alternative to piracy and not paying anything for content anywhere. We're witness the bankrupting of artists over time. And it amazes me that on a forum of content creators, you can see the self-interested individuals rationalizing it as fair. We can argue about the business models all day long, but it should be in tandem with the fact that life isn't fair, and what's happening to these artists isn't fair. The way people are talking about it, it doesn't really come off that way. Sometimes I wonder if SOPA would have gone through and achieved the purposes it was set out to do - yes, let's be ideological for a moment and talk about the purpose vs the potential abuse. A lot of websites that harbor piracy are no now no longer available, and it's way more difficult to pirate your favorite music. What would that world be like, for consumers and artists? Maybe more artists would pull their music from the streaming services, which were formed to fight piracy. Now all of a sudden that 9.95 per month you pay for music isn't so great, because not everyone is on there. The streaming services were built as an alternative to a crime - piracy. To me the end result would be simple: The average user would have to pay more for their content, and that money would flow more into artists pockets, and those who work in artistic industries, which would reinforce more and better artistic creation. I am probably one of the few: I pay for all of my content, and not on streaming services. I don't buy singles, I buy the whole album. When a friend opens a business, I don't immediately ask for a deal. I go in, and pay full price, and try to support that friend as best as I can. I may be old school - I pay for things, I am happy to pay for things. I want to financially support people who create things, because I want more people to have a means to be able to go out, create, and be rewarded for their work.
- Beltiras 11y ago
  *rite of passage
- striking 11y ago
  Have you considered that most of the money goes to the label rather than to the artist? [1][2] Unless you're paying them directly, you're still not paying the artist. Streaming and piracy don't even come close to the drain that labels put on income flow to artists. Artists made just about $23.40 for every $1000 their songs sold for in 2010, according to TechDirt [2]. I wish the world were as you described. But it's not. SOPA came close to destroying free speech online instead of guaranteeing artists their fair share. [1]: http://www.bradsucks.net/archives/2007/05/22/where-your-music-money-goes/ http://www.bradsucks.net/archives/2007/05/22/where-your-musi... (an indie/marketplace artist's view) [2]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml (standard industry view)
byuu 11y ago
I'm not making any statement on whether it's good or bad, right or wrong, but ... Software developers aren't immune to piracy's effects, either. Whether we like it or not, we're quickly shifting into a world where art is only viable as a labor of love. Everything being digital means copying is free. Scarcity has gone out the window. Now if only our increased productivity and automations led to lesser and lesser working hours, we'd all have a lot more time for artistic endeavors on the side. But yes, it's becoming increasingly difficult to sustain yourself solely as an artist. Life isn't fair, unfortunately. Would the world be better if we had purely gratis art? I don't know ... the production values would certainly be a lot lower. But maybe people doing things solely because they enjoy it, rather than for the paycheck, would result in more passion and creativity; and less cash grabs. Or maybe everything would be awful. Either way, it seems futile to rail against something none of us can possibly change, and wish for the good old days of $15 CDs with one good song on it, or $200 OS installation CDs, or $800 paint programs.
- w4 11y ago
  > Software developers aren't immune to piracy's effects, either. Whether we like it or not, we're quickly shifting into a world where art is only viable as a labor of love. Everything being digital means copying is free. Isn't this one of the big reasons for the rise of SaaS apps, though? Developers, unlike musicians, have found a way to combat piracy in a way that both consumers seem to prefer (lower upfront costs and usage based pricing) and developers benefit from (more revenue over time in exchange for delivering real value). Besides, being forced to provide 3 months of free usage without any say in the matter is hardly defensible due to piracy. It's even less defensible when the party enforcing the free usage is the party that stands to benefit most from it.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    Do consumers prefer SaaS? The reaction to Windows and Office becoming subscription software seems pretty uniformly negative.
    - w4 11y ago
gress 11y ago
Can you explain why that wouldn't be a great deal for app developers? I develop iOS apps, and I'd love it if apple moved to a pay for use model. I care about a world where the most useful apps are rewarded.
- w4 11y ago
  > Can you explain why that wouldn't be a great deal for app developers? I develop iOS apps, and I'd love it if apple moved to a pay for use model. While it may be the case that pay-per-use would be a great model for developers (though I'm highly dubious that this is the case for anyone that isn't making a trivial $0.99 app), that isn't the main thrust of my hypothetical. The problem with this scenario is the loss of a full quarter of revenue from every new App Store user in the interest of Apple acquiring subscribers. Do you think it would be a great deal for app developers to not be paid for three months of every single App Store user's usage?
  - gress 11y ago
    Pay-per-use would be far better for developers making deep apps that people actually use regularly than those making trivial 99c apps that are discarded quickly. Currently, an app like Omnioutliner or Clear that improves a person's productivity over years and is used 100-1000x as much as a 99c joke app can only command a 10x higher price and is then impeded by people being reluctant to pay so much up front. But... to address your main point - yes absolutely, I'd happily give up a quarter of revenue to move to such a scheme, where my recurring revenue would be much higher because my apps are actually used by people and have a lower barrier for new users. It would be a mutually beneficial chance for developers, apple, and consumers. However - I do grant that developers are more likely to be able to finance this transition than musicians. Since nobody is paying for the music during the trial, and the intended result is higher revenues for the artists (and for Apple, but notably proportionally more for the artists), it is flatly disingenuous for the artists to position Apple as getting all the benefit. What if Apple offered the artists an advance covering the 3 months based on current iTunes revenues, and then recouped this over three years by taking a higher percentage for that period from the artists who opted for it? That would solve the problem of the 3 month gap.
Shivetya 11y ago
I am all in her camp on this one. Most services eat the cost of trial periods in hopes of snaring subscribers and making up the loss. Apple is being dishonest by claiming free trial while passing off the costs to the artists by relying on Apple's name and status so as not to have people question it. In other words, they are spinning the story faster that old 78s
- gress 11y ago
  By your logic, Apple should pay for the music and give it away free since they are the ones who will benefit. But that means that if revenues rise as a result of the new service, Apple should keep all the extra profit rather than sharing it with the artists. Is that what you really want?
  - logician76 11y ago
    Apple wants to give it away for free, not the artists. Apple needs the artists, hence they need to pay. Revenue rising with the new service will eat into the other revenue streams from sales. Subscription revenue has already been proven to be laughable with Spotify. Saying that Apple gets to keep all the extra profit because they paid the artists during arbitrary terms set by Apple is incredibly short sighted, as the profit you speak of means profit to Apple, but a loss to the music industry.
    - KingMob 11y ago
      > Subscription revenue has already been proven to be laughable with Spotify. True, but that's because the labels keep the vast majority of Spotify's payout.
    - gress 11y ago
      This is simply false. Apple's deal shares more revenue with the artists than any other service. Therefore if users adopt Apple Music, the artists will get more in aggregate. http://recode.net/2015/06/15/heres-what-happens-to-your-10-after-you-pay-for-a-month-of-apple-music http://recode.net/2015/06/15/heres-what-happens-to-your-10-a... My point is not that I believe that Apple should keep the excess profit. It's that if Apple's service increases the overalls profit for the artists it's reasonable that they should share in the costs of marketing. Otherwise the artists are double dipping.
xasos 11y ago
I agree, Apple should front the costs during that 3 month trial period. It's just not fair to not pay artists. The only benefit I see from this is that artists can get exposure they normally wouldn't get, because of the smaller library size.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  > I agree, Apple should front the costs during that 3 month trial period. Precisely. We're talking about a company with $200 billion in cash reserves asking artists - many independent and hardly famous - to subsidize their marketing efforts.
- kstrauser 11y ago
  > Apple should front the costs during that 3 month trial period. It's just not fair to not pay artists. Why? Apple negotiated that arrangement with those artists' labels, who agreed that this was a fair and equitable situation. You and I might like to think that we would have chosen otherwise, but the people involved in this contract were happy with the outcome. Remember, Apple didn't unilaterally come up with this. They didn't just open a service and announce that they weren't going to pay anyone.
kstrauser 11y ago
> I'd encourage you to consider the hypothetical I posted in the last thread about Apple Music's 3 month trial. To make the analogy a little more accurate: > Tomorrow, Apple announces that it will be introducing an "App Store Subscription." For $9.99/month users will be allowed to use one App Store app at a time. When an app is running, it will present a button allowing a user to purchase that app so that they may use it any time they want, whether or not their phone is connected to the Internet, and concurrently with other apps. During the 3 month free trial, Apple will not pay royalties for streaming apps but will pay normal royalties for any apps purchased. This would suck for the Omni Groups and Mojangs, but absolutely awesome for tiny shops who currently make almost nothing and would now have much greater exposure. Likewise Taylor Swift doesn't need more exposure to sell her music, but Joe Garage might actually pick up a few listeners and fans. You see this is a money grab. I see this is as a necessary (and label approved!) bootstrapping for long term gain. And in the mean time, even major artists will continue to get their current revenue stream from radio stations, Spotify, iTMS, etc. unless we really believe that Apple Music is going to gain a 100% market share immediately. Long term, even that would probably be a huge benefit to artists because it's almost certainly a better deal than they're getting from anyone else today.
- buro9 11y ago
  Unless you happen to be this Summer's big record... in which case your one profitable window for your track will have has just been obliterated.
  - latj 11y ago
    Lets say you are that artist. You have practiced, trained, studied. You have worked hard and have a rare natural talent. You sang the songs and played guitar. Now you have "this summer's big record". Two million children want to listen to your song (without paying any additional costs) 50-100 times over the next 3 months, and then never again. How much is that worth to society? How much money should you make from that? Consider an elementary teacher tasked with teaching 28 children to read and guiding them to becoming active participants in democracy rather than repeat offenders. $50k/yr. Compare a state university computer science professor who will teach dozens of new jacks this year how to measure and optimize algorithms-- setting them up for a life of full time employment while all their friends tread in the sea of shit and unemployment around them. $90k/yr. Consider a bus driver, a construction worker, a civil engineer, anyone who didnt have a chance to finish high school or College and still goes to work every day. Or those who went to ivy league colleges and resisted the urge to go into finance. Productive people. We are all productive and we all add value, and we are underpaid. Our kids will have varying access to good education. We have less access to inferior healthcare. We spend too much time at work and not enough time with our kids. The lowest of us live in poverty and violence, relegated to feeding our children less healthy, life shortening diets. And thats just in the U.S., one of the wealthiest states on the planet. Now how much is that song you sang worth? Artists should be about art. If you dont like the fact that Apple wants you to be their slave, then distribute your music yourself. If people dont want to pay for your music, then keep doing what you want to do and starve or start doing what they want you to do and make money. But dont try to be about the art and say the faceless evil corporation should pay you more. It is disrespectful to the productive workers of the world.
13throwaway 11y ago
App economics are much different from music economics. From what I have observed, most people (the casual listener) will listen to the free streaming services (pandora, apple radio, etc). When people want to listen to a specific song they listen to it on youtube.
mistercow 11y ago
>I, personally, would ditch iOS development for Android in a heartbeat if that happened. This is kind of the problem though. You might, but most iOS developers would take the lumps and continue on as normal. iOS is too lucrative a market to ditch on philosophical grounds. After all, if Apple did adopt this policy, it's not even clear that it would be their worst offense regarding the iOS app ecosystem. And that's the lesson Apple learned from iOS. They're just applying it now to their music store.
tolmasky 11y ago
But this IS kind of what happened! Ignoring temporarily the very good points below of this not being a good analogy (you'd have to take into account one app at a time, streaming, etc), this is essentially what happened "naturally" to the app market. Go to top revenue: none of those apps are paid. They're all free (with in app purchase). The market itself "raced to the bottom" to a world where, yeah, most the apps actually succeeding due in fact operate as if they're "free" for x months, and then you make orthogonal purchases. Sure, no one is stopping you from charging 99$ for an app on the store, but most of us know that relying on that model is like hoping you're a NBA-level player (or rock star, ha!). Developers aren't complaining, well, they are, but aren't desperate because we at least have created an alternative for ourselves. Sure, we all wish we could charge box-sale rates, but at least we;ve figured out something to do instead. Maybe this is what the music industry needs to do. Maybe I should be able to listen to anything I want but be able to in app purchase taylor swift emoji or t-shirts or what have you. Maybe that looks like an innovative industry as opposed to having come up with exactly ONE new idea of how to sell music (rhapsody style streaming) in the last 10 years. These are teens we're talking about here. Put a teen in a mall and tell me its hard to get them to buy something. Come On! If they're not buying the EXACT something you're offering, maybe its worth tweaking it just a TINY amount.
macspoofing 11y ago
Steam allows full refunds within 2 weeks. You're not publishing on steam anymore? If there was a subscription program for apps, I could see apple introducing a similar trial period.
tacone 11y ago
Actually, it reminds a bit of Amazon, who used to promote Android apps giving them free for a day (at the expense of the opting-in developers of course): http://readwrite.com/2011/08/02/amazons_growing_appstore_problem_android_developer http://readwrite.com/2011/08/02/amazons_growing_appstore_pro...
TTPrograms 11y ago
I don't really have an expectation of making a ton of money selling my apps anyways because I can always go around the country and fill stadiums with people who want to see me use my app on a stage. Oh wait.
lkrubner 11y ago
It's worth noting that this bit: "For $9.99/month users will receive unlimited access to all apps on the App Store. Developers will receive a share of each user's subscription payments in proportion to app usage." is exactly what Kachingle unveiled back in 2010, and the public hated it. So, if this wasn't Apple pulling this stunt, we know how much the public would hate it. http://kachingle.com/ http://kachingle.com/
interpol_p 11y ago
I'd be interested in getting paid by usage rather than once upfront. And if a free trial period let people get on board that would be fine with me. I have an app that is "expensive" ($15) but I have dedicated users who paid once four years ago and continue to use the app today. All the major updates since have been free. While I don't know whether the pay-by-usage model would be financially better for me, I'd be pretty open minded about it and wouldn't mind the free trial.
wooger 11y ago
The Spotify / Apple streaming payment model isn't even as fair as that: The revenue from all users is pooled, and then divided per listen rather than per user/artist etc. So this'd be like splitting the app store sub revenue by "app launches" or some other bullshit. Pop junk like Taylor gets a far higher fraction of revenue than they deserve, from teens listening to it non-stop. Artists that I like get 0% of my cash, even if I listen to nothing but their music. The system would at least be fair in scope if artists got a share of each users subscription fee, split per listen for the songs they listened to. That the payments involved are very small and mostly go to middlemen is a separate problem, the whole system is designed to fuck niche artists.

by w4 11y ago

taylorwho 11y ago

The only thing swift about her "music" is how quickly/swiftly listeners turn off when her wailing comes on. And Taylor? Pah! She needs a tailor - have you seen some the crummy outfits she wears?

pmorici 11y ago

That sounds like an amazing offer. who wouldn't want to trade a one time free or 99 cent payment for recurring revenue.

sanswork 11y ago
Well you have to split that $10/month with all the other apps that the user accessed that month(on average). So it's quite likely that your somewhat successful app wouldn't even reach the 99 cents anymore let alone 99 cents per user.
- w4 11y ago
  Right - and now further imagine that your app is actually making decent money before the introduction of the subscription model (like Taylor Swift does off records). How pleased with this arrangement are you going to be? I'd posit not very.
- sehugg 11y ago
  This is a pretty successful model in some countries: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/kddi-smartpass/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/kddi-smartpass/
  - sanswork 11y ago
    It says it is limited to 500 apps so compared to 1.4m in the app store less people to spread the money around to. It also sounds like they removed the option of using the Android store from this quote "saying that consumers would get confused if there were two app stores — Google Play and a branded KDDI store". So there really isn't the option of their users going to a different system.
danieldk 11y ago
Of course, music works completely differently. I have many albums that I only listened to ten times or so. In the old model, they have still received a fair share of $10, in the new model, not so much. I can easily understand why artists want to opt out. I am also not sure about Apple's model for the distribution of subscription fees. But e.g. in Spotify's model, it is largely large acts benefitting from indies, rather than the other way around. http://lit.vulf.de/spotify-so-little/ http://lit.vulf.de/spotify-so-little/
- StringyBob 11y ago
  That link perfectly describes my concern with subscription systems. If Apple distribute the royalties calculated per-user rather than based on (total royalties / total number of listens system wide) I'll move over from spotify, as it will reward the bands I like more than the current system. I like that spotify pays royalties from free accounts, I dislike that I am effectively subsidizing this as a premium user. However, at the moment I am more comfortable with this than apples '3 months no royalties' system. Another interesting point is that for a music subscription services, there is very little keeping users tied to one provider - all I need is the ability to export my playlists. I wonder if spotify's revenue will collapse for 3 months, but if they can be better than apple, they can get it all back 3 months later.
  - reagency 11y ago
    You aren't subsidizing anything. You are paying market price for a product. The seller does bizdev how they choose.
    - StringyBob 11y ago
      Technically true. I think for the arts this is something of an unusual case I'd describe more as an emotional than a financial transaction. I'm paying for something that I could easily get (illegally) for free. My allegiance is to the music and musicians, not to apple, spotify or anyone else providing distribution, as such 'supporting the type of music I like' is a very strong selling point, (not strong enough for me to use Tidal though!) I presume Apple are trying to establish differentiation through the 'radio' service, but since the baseline market requirement is the ability to listen to practically anything all-you-can-eat, it'll be hard for them to achieve it there.
clord 11y ago
It might help prevent crap-tastic apps on the store because it changes the incentive structure. If the subscription is doled out in proportion to time spent in-app, the incentive on developers would be to maximize engagement time, which might be a good thing for users. For paid apps such a scheme would be a problem since it would likely reduce income, but as a way to get money to fund free apps, not a bad idea actually.
- glesica 11y ago
  > If the subscription is doled out in proportion to time spent in-app And think of all the cool new laborious, overcomplicated, and time-consuming UI designs we could look forward to!
  - schuylerlarson 11y ago
    Great just more apps for me to not use... It's not like people won't try to make nicer, simpler interfaces like they already do.
- nmrm2 11y ago
  > If the subscription is doled out in proportion to time spent in-app Then what stops shady slot game app developer from keeping his app running in the background 24/7 and trashing the commons (or private garden, I guess)? Technical solutions can probably go a decent amount of the way, but there will always be a work-around...
  - StringyBob 11y ago
    Time spent in an app is certainly not the best measure of value. Ideally, a user could be given some flexibility to 'upvote' subscription payment allocation to apps that have the most value to them.
- chongli 11y ago
  How do you measure time spent "in-app"? Does the app have to be in the foreground or merely running in the background? If it has to be in the foreground then how does that help apps that mainly run in the background such as RunKeeper? If it's allowed to run in the background and still get credit then won't that create an incentive for battery-draining crap that users struggle to shut down?
w4 11y ago
You're missing the main thrust of the hypothetical (arguments about how "amazing" the offer is aside): > Apple simultaneously announces a 3 month free trial for all App Store accounts, and states that it will be making no payments to developers during that trial since users are not paying for it. That's a terrible offer no matter how you cut it.

taylorwho 11y ago

You seem to be confusing Taylor with musicians.

shimfish 11y ago

Except how long do you think it would take Google to move to app subscriptions if that happened?

Justsignedup 11y ago
There'll always be someone making an app. You can stop producing good apps, but since most apps are already free w/ ads or are a free addon to an already existing service it probably wouldn't matter for the majority of apps people use :(
w4 11y ago
I'm not so sure. I think it'd largely have to do with developers' and consumers' reactions. If Android was suddenly ground zero for innovative, high quality apps, due to Apple alienating developers, I don't think Google would choose the same model. Indeed, you can see Google attempting to attract developers to its ecosystem and away from Apple's in some of their recent developer policy changes (no app review times, etc). But now we're getting way off topic. :)
- cwyers 11y ago
  Google also knows full well that they don't own their platform the way Apple does - developers would just sell directly and have users sideload, or move to Amazon's app store.

imteamcoltra 11y ago

It's hard because music you can actually track how many people are listening to what songs and how much of the song they listen to and compensate accordingly. If they were able to track how often a person used an app then I don't think that would be too bad except for extremely niche apps which are usually enterprise already. I would take a smaller payment if I got paid $0.01 for three minutes my app was open on a phone, rather than charging $0.99 (or even $2.99)... It depends on the app though

lighthazard 11y ago
That seems wrong.. you can easily track app usage. Apple and Google have insane amounts of information about the devices and apps being used on each device.
StringyBob 11y ago
I don't think current subscription systems make the best use of this data. I personally believe that royalties should be calculated per individual paying user account rather than aggregated over total playbacks in the service. In other words, If I only listen to 'my favorite niche band' in a month, but don't use the service much, it's unlikely that they will see anything near the full possible share of royalties from that months $10. The system instead is biased to musicians whose fans use the system most heavily on loop - ironically more likely to be taylor swift type pop megastars. [edit - explained more clearly by http://lit.vulf.de/spotify-so-little/ http://lit.vulf.de/spotify-so-little/] Anyone know how apple will compare on royalties after the 3 month period compared to spotify? I've been a spotify premium subscriber since 2009, but would move to a system that meets my definition of equitable.
- nmrm2 11y ago
  This is one reason I pretty much just leave classical music on in the background 16/7. I'm absolutely not abusing the service -- I'm paying a subscription for exactly the right to do this. And, it helps the artists who get most shafted by the aggregate play count payout model.

sehugg 11y ago

I, personally, would ditch iOS development for Android in a heartbeat if that happened. But what if you had just ditched Android (i.e. Spotify) last year after publicly complaining about its usurious terms?

w4 11y ago
Then it's back to the web (or album sales and touring in Swift's case).

mikehearn 11y ago

There are a lot of economic differences between music and apps (e.g. price range, labels negotiate on behalf of artists, music has dozens of outlets versus 2-3 for apps, etc), but my hope is you would still analyze the economics before ditching. If you ultimately would stand to make more money through subscriptions in the long term, despite losing three months of revenue, then it would make sense to stay, right?

blankenship 11y ago
There are a lot of economic differences between music and apps Are there? (At least for independent musicians?) From my experience, it seems like a decent comparison—you can make an app or album for $2000 or $200k.
- nmrm2 11y ago
  It seems like the more difficult barrier to this model is the technical difference between music and apps. In order for a piece of music to play in the background 24/7, the user has to pretty much explicitly allow it. In order for an app to do the same thing, the user just has to grant it enough permissions.
- tajen 11y ago
  You can sell support for software and usage for an app. There's very few recurrent revenue in music.
  - edanm 11y ago
    Sure there is - live shows.
    - sdenton4 11y ago
      Yeah, but touring has a crazy pile of expenses associated, in addition to all the unfortunateness of being on the road for as long as you want to make money at it. http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/11/25/band-just-finished-28-day-tour-made-much http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/11/25/band-ju...

brownbat 11y ago

Agree for different reasons. I don't think they're being greedy, any more than I think users are being entitled when they wait for steep discounts on Steam games or refuse to pay .99 for an app someone worked really hard on. Price trends towards marginal cost, and marginal cost for digital IP is zero. That's true if everyone on both sides is a group of angels, devils, spoiled brats, or automatons.

zwily 11y ago

Pay-per-usage of apps (similar to streaming music) might be really interesting. Of course, games already kind of do that via IAP and it absolutely sucks, so who knows.

Mahn 11y ago
The way things are going, with a couple mobile games doing billions, and hundreds of thousands of others doing next to nothing, non-IAP pay-per-usage in app stores may well come sooner than most people expect.
- bphogan 11y ago
  Before Photoshop went subscription-based, I assumed they would have gone the IAP route. For example, need a blur tool? Add it for 1.99. Or buy the Retouching Pack for $25.
sliverstorm 11y ago
Pay-per-usage means that apps which are by nature both critical & valuable but also infrequently used, get no money...

makeitsuckless 11y ago

What makes musicians sound more greedy or unreasonable than most is the generally passive attitude towards the innovation necessary to sustain their own income. They expect Apple, Spotify, Pandora etcetera to take all the risk (including the major risk of being unilaterally torpedoed by those same artists), do all the upfront investment and then whine about not getting a big enough piece of the cake. Taylor Swift is being an outlier here in the respectful way in which she communicates. And she knows it, that's why she chooses her words very carefully. Most of these artist just bitch and whine about their percentage, ignoring the fact that, with antiquated copyright laws firmly on the side of the music industry, technology firms are taking quite insane risk in their attempts to innovate the way music connects to the listeners. If they hadn't, sales of music would have totally flatlined by now and those artist would be way worse off.

Beltiras 11y ago
I suspect that this copy is something her PR agent wrote, even if she may have contributed the sentiment.
sdenton4 11y ago
It's disgusting really; there's so little risk in being a musician after all. Won't someone think of the poor capitalists?

biggy3100 11y ago

Culture has shifted and now piracy is not looked at as a real crime, but a passage of rite. These streaming services came around as an alternative to piracy and not paying anything for content anywhere. We're witness the bankrupting of artists over time. And it amazes me that on a forum of content creators, you can see the self-interested individuals rationalizing it as fair. We can argue about the business models all day long, but it should be in tandem with the fact that life isn't fair, and what's happening to these artists isn't fair. The way people are talking about it, it doesn't really come off that way. Sometimes I wonder if SOPA would have gone through and achieved the purposes it was set out to do - yes, let's be ideological for a moment and talk about the purpose vs the potential abuse. A lot of websites that harbor piracy are no now no longer available, and it's way more difficult to pirate your favorite music. What would that world be like, for consumers and artists? Maybe more artists would pull their music from the streaming services, which were formed to fight piracy. Now all of a sudden that 9.95 per month you pay for music isn't so great, because not everyone is on there. The streaming services were built as an alternative to a crime - piracy. To me the end result would be simple: The average user would have to pay more for their content, and that money would flow more into artists pockets, and those who work in artistic industries, which would reinforce more and better artistic creation. I am probably one of the few: I pay for all of my content, and not on streaming services. I don't buy singles, I buy the whole album. When a friend opens a business, I don't immediately ask for a deal. I go in, and pay full price, and try to support that friend as best as I can. I may be old school - I pay for things, I am happy to pay for things. I want to financially support people who create things, because I want more people to have a means to be able to go out, create, and be rewarded for their work.

Beltiras 11y ago
*rite of passage
striking 11y ago
Have you considered that most of the money goes to the label rather than to the artist? [1][2] Unless you're paying them directly, you're still not paying the artist. Streaming and piracy don't even come close to the drain that labels put on income flow to artists. Artists made just about $23.40 for every $1000 their songs sold for in 2010, according to TechDirt [2]. I wish the world were as you described. But it's not. SOPA came close to destroying free speech online instead of guaranteeing artists their fair share. [1]: http://www.bradsucks.net/archives/2007/05/22/where-your-music-money-goes/ http://www.bradsucks.net/archives/2007/05/22/where-your-musi... (an indie/marketplace artist's view) [2]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml (standard industry view)

byuu 11y ago

I'm not making any statement on whether it's good or bad, right or wrong, but ... Software developers aren't immune to piracy's effects, either. Whether we like it or not, we're quickly shifting into a world where art is only viable as a labor of love. Everything being digital means copying is free. Scarcity has gone out the window. Now if only our increased productivity and automations led to lesser and lesser working hours, we'd all have a lot more time for artistic endeavors on the side. But yes, it's becoming increasingly difficult to sustain yourself solely as an artist. Life isn't fair, unfortunately. Would the world be better if we had purely gratis art? I don't know ... the production values would certainly be a lot lower. But maybe people doing things solely because they enjoy it, rather than for the paycheck, would result in more passion and creativity; and less cash grabs. Or maybe everything would be awful. Either way, it seems futile to rail against something none of us can possibly change, and wish for the good old days of $15 CDs with one good song on it, or $200 OS installation CDs, or $800 paint programs.

w4 11y ago
> Software developers aren't immune to piracy's effects, either. Whether we like it or not, we're quickly shifting into a world where art is only viable as a labor of love. Everything being digital means copying is free. Isn't this one of the big reasons for the rise of SaaS apps, though? Developers, unlike musicians, have found a way to combat piracy in a way that both consumers seem to prefer (lower upfront costs and usage based pricing) and developers benefit from (more revenue over time in exchange for delivering real value). Besides, being forced to provide 3 months of free usage without any say in the matter is hardly defensible due to piracy. It's even less defensible when the party enforcing the free usage is the party that stands to benefit most from it.
- rayiner 11y ago
  Do consumers prefer SaaS? The reaction to Windows and Office becoming subscription software seems pretty uniformly negative.
  - w4 11y ago

gress 11y ago

Can you explain why that wouldn't be a great deal for app developers? I develop iOS apps, and I'd love it if apple moved to a pay for use model. I care about a world where the most useful apps are rewarded.

w4 11y ago
> Can you explain why that wouldn't be a great deal for app developers? I develop iOS apps, and I'd love it if apple moved to a pay for use model. While it may be the case that pay-per-use would be a great model for developers (though I'm highly dubious that this is the case for anyone that isn't making a trivial $0.99 app), that isn't the main thrust of my hypothetical. The problem with this scenario is the loss of a full quarter of revenue from every new App Store user in the interest of Apple acquiring subscribers. Do you think it would be a great deal for app developers to not be paid for three months of every single App Store user's usage?
- gress 11y ago
  Pay-per-use would be far better for developers making deep apps that people actually use regularly than those making trivial 99c apps that are discarded quickly. Currently, an app like Omnioutliner or Clear that improves a person's productivity over years and is used 100-1000x as much as a 99c joke app can only command a 10x higher price and is then impeded by people being reluctant to pay so much up front. But... to address your main point - yes absolutely, I'd happily give up a quarter of revenue to move to such a scheme, where my recurring revenue would be much higher because my apps are actually used by people and have a lower barrier for new users. It would be a mutually beneficial chance for developers, apple, and consumers. However - I do grant that developers are more likely to be able to finance this transition than musicians. Since nobody is paying for the music during the trial, and the intended result is higher revenues for the artists (and for Apple, but notably proportionally more for the artists), it is flatly disingenuous for the artists to position Apple as getting all the benefit. What if Apple offered the artists an advance covering the 3 months based on current iTunes revenues, and then recouped this over three years by taking a higher percentage for that period from the artists who opted for it? That would solve the problem of the 3 month gap.

Shivetya 11y ago

I am all in her camp on this one. Most services eat the cost of trial periods in hopes of snaring subscribers and making up the loss. Apple is being dishonest by claiming free trial while passing off the costs to the artists by relying on Apple's name and status so as not to have people question it. In other words, they are spinning the story faster that old 78s

gress 11y ago
By your logic, Apple should pay for the music and give it away free since they are the ones who will benefit. But that means that if revenues rise as a result of the new service, Apple should keep all the extra profit rather than sharing it with the artists. Is that what you really want?
- logician76 11y ago
  Apple wants to give it away for free, not the artists. Apple needs the artists, hence they need to pay. Revenue rising with the new service will eat into the other revenue streams from sales. Subscription revenue has already been proven to be laughable with Spotify. Saying that Apple gets to keep all the extra profit because they paid the artists during arbitrary terms set by Apple is incredibly short sighted, as the profit you speak of means profit to Apple, but a loss to the music industry.
  - KingMob 11y ago
    > Subscription revenue has already been proven to be laughable with Spotify. True, but that's because the labels keep the vast majority of Spotify's payout.
  - gress 11y ago
    This is simply false. Apple's deal shares more revenue with the artists than any other service. Therefore if users adopt Apple Music, the artists will get more in aggregate. http://recode.net/2015/06/15/heres-what-happens-to-your-10-after-you-pay-for-a-month-of-apple-music http://recode.net/2015/06/15/heres-what-happens-to-your-10-a... My point is not that I believe that Apple should keep the excess profit. It's that if Apple's service increases the overalls profit for the artists it's reasonable that they should share in the costs of marketing. Otherwise the artists are double dipping.

xasos 11y ago

I agree, Apple should front the costs during that 3 month trial period. It's just not fair to not pay artists. The only benefit I see from this is that artists can get exposure they normally wouldn't get, because of the smaller library size.

ceejayoz 11y ago
> I agree, Apple should front the costs during that 3 month trial period. Precisely. We're talking about a company with $200 billion in cash reserves asking artists - many independent and hardly famous - to subsidize their marketing efforts.
kstrauser 11y ago
> Apple should front the costs during that 3 month trial period. It's just not fair to not pay artists. Why? Apple negotiated that arrangement with those artists' labels, who agreed that this was a fair and equitable situation. You and I might like to think that we would have chosen otherwise, but the people involved in this contract were happy with the outcome. Remember, Apple didn't unilaterally come up with this. They didn't just open a service and announce that they weren't going to pay anyone.

kstrauser 11y ago

> I'd encourage you to consider the hypothetical I posted in the last thread about Apple Music's 3 month trial. To make the analogy a little more accurate: > Tomorrow, Apple announces that it will be introducing an "App Store Subscription." For $9.99/month users will be allowed to use one App Store app at a time. When an app is running, it will present a button allowing a user to purchase that app so that they may use it any time they want, whether or not their phone is connected to the Internet, and concurrently with other apps. During the 3 month free trial, Apple will not pay royalties for streaming apps but will pay normal royalties for any apps purchased. This would suck for the Omni Groups and Mojangs, but absolutely awesome for tiny shops who currently make almost nothing and would now have much greater exposure. Likewise Taylor Swift doesn't need more exposure to sell her music, but Joe Garage might actually pick up a few listeners and fans. You see this is a money grab. I see this is as a necessary (and label approved!) bootstrapping for long term gain. And in the mean time, even major artists will continue to get their current revenue stream from radio stations, Spotify, iTMS, etc. unless we really believe that Apple Music is going to gain a 100% market share immediately. Long term, even that would probably be a huge benefit to artists because it's almost certainly a better deal than they're getting from anyone else today.

buro9 11y ago
Unless you happen to be this Summer's big record... in which case your one profitable window for your track will have has just been obliterated.
- latj 11y ago
  Lets say you are that artist. You have practiced, trained, studied. You have worked hard and have a rare natural talent. You sang the songs and played guitar. Now you have "this summer's big record". Two million children want to listen to your song (without paying any additional costs) 50-100 times over the next 3 months, and then never again. How much is that worth to society? How much money should you make from that? Consider an elementary teacher tasked with teaching 28 children to read and guiding them to becoming active participants in democracy rather than repeat offenders. $50k/yr. Compare a state university computer science professor who will teach dozens of new jacks this year how to measure and optimize algorithms-- setting them up for a life of full time employment while all their friends tread in the sea of shit and unemployment around them. $90k/yr. Consider a bus driver, a construction worker, a civil engineer, anyone who didnt have a chance to finish high school or College and still goes to work every day. Or those who went to ivy league colleges and resisted the urge to go into finance. Productive people. We are all productive and we all add value, and we are underpaid. Our kids will have varying access to good education. We have less access to inferior healthcare. We spend too much time at work and not enough time with our kids. The lowest of us live in poverty and violence, relegated to feeding our children less healthy, life shortening diets. And thats just in the U.S., one of the wealthiest states on the planet. Now how much is that song you sang worth? Artists should be about art. If you dont like the fact that Apple wants you to be their slave, then distribute your music yourself. If people dont want to pay for your music, then keep doing what you want to do and starve or start doing what they want you to do and make money. But dont try to be about the art and say the faceless evil corporation should pay you more. It is disrespectful to the productive workers of the world.

13throwaway 11y ago

App economics are much different from music economics. From what I have observed, most people (the casual listener) will listen to the free streaming services (pandora, apple radio, etc). When people want to listen to a specific song they listen to it on youtube.

mistercow 11y ago

>I, personally, would ditch iOS development for Android in a heartbeat if that happened. This is kind of the problem though. You might, but most iOS developers would take the lumps and continue on as normal. iOS is too lucrative a market to ditch on philosophical grounds. After all, if Apple did adopt this policy, it's not even clear that it would be their worst offense regarding the iOS app ecosystem. And that's the lesson Apple learned from iOS. They're just applying it now to their music store.

tolmasky 11y ago

But this IS kind of what happened! Ignoring temporarily the very good points below of this not being a good analogy (you'd have to take into account one app at a time, streaming, etc), this is essentially what happened "naturally" to the app market. Go to top revenue: none of those apps are paid. They're all free (with in app purchase). The market itself "raced to the bottom" to a world where, yeah, most the apps actually succeeding due in fact operate as if they're "free" for x months, and then you make orthogonal purchases. Sure, no one is stopping you from charging 99$ for an app on the store, but most of us know that relying on that model is like hoping you're a NBA-level player (or rock star, ha!). Developers aren't complaining, well, they are, but aren't desperate because we at least have created an alternative for ourselves. Sure, we all wish we could charge box-sale rates, but at least we;ve figured out something to do instead. Maybe this is what the music industry needs to do. Maybe I should be able to listen to anything I want but be able to in app purchase taylor swift emoji or t-shirts or what have you. Maybe that looks like an innovative industry as opposed to having come up with exactly ONE new idea of how to sell music (rhapsody style streaming) in the last 10 years. These are teens we're talking about here. Put a teen in a mall and tell me its hard to get them to buy something. Come On! If they're not buying the EXACT something you're offering, maybe its worth tweaking it just a TINY amount.

macspoofing 11y ago

Steam allows full refunds within 2 weeks. You're not publishing on steam anymore? If there was a subscription program for apps, I could see apple introducing a similar trial period.

tacone 11y ago

Actually, it reminds a bit of Amazon, who used to promote Android apps giving them free for a day (at the expense of the opting-in developers of course): http://readwrite.com/2011/08/02/amazons_growing_appstore_problem_android_developer http://readwrite.com/2011/08/02/amazons_growing_appstore_pro...

TTPrograms 11y ago

I don't really have an expectation of making a ton of money selling my apps anyways because I can always go around the country and fill stadiums with people who want to see me use my app on a stage. Oh wait.

lkrubner 11y ago

It's worth noting that this bit: "For $9.99/month users will receive unlimited access to all apps on the App Store. Developers will receive a share of each user's subscription payments in proportion to app usage." is exactly what Kachingle unveiled back in 2010, and the public hated it. So, if this wasn't Apple pulling this stunt, we know how much the public would hate it. http://kachingle.com/ http://kachingle.com/

interpol_p 11y ago

I'd be interested in getting paid by usage rather than once upfront. And if a free trial period let people get on board that would be fine with me. I have an app that is "expensive" ($15) but I have dedicated users who paid once four years ago and continue to use the app today. All the major updates since have been free. While I don't know whether the pay-by-usage model would be financially better for me, I'd be pretty open minded about it and wouldn't mind the free trial.

wooger 11y ago

The Spotify / Apple streaming payment model isn't even as fair as that: The revenue from all users is pooled, and then divided per listen rather than per user/artist etc. So this'd be like splitting the app store sub revenue by "app launches" or some other bullshit. Pop junk like Taylor gets a far higher fraction of revenue than they deserve, from teens listening to it non-stop. Artists that I like get 0% of my cash, even if I listen to nothing but their music. The system would at least be fair in scope if artists got a share of each users subscription fee, split per listen for the songs they listened to. That the payments involved are very small and mostly go to middlemen is a separate problem, the whole system is designed to fuck niche artists.