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In 215 comments no one that I could find has mentioned that, while well-intentioned, this post comes off as somewhat disingenuous because Apple does not deal di

by ixtli 11y ago

In 215 comments no one that I could find has mentioned that, while well-intentioned, this post comes off as somewhat disingenuous because Apple does not deal directly with the artists. The entire (pretty well-written) thing doesn't mention _at all_ that the majority of musicians do not deal directly with distributors. Think about it: how are Apple/Google/Spotify/Amazon going to deal directly with 10 million individuals? The answer is that they don't. I think anyone can agree that Apple is being shitty by not paying for something they're making money on, the people who are directly responsible for not compensating the artists are, rather conspicuously, left out of this rant.

donarb 11y ago
Exactly. And my question is forget the digital part of it. How did this work in the days of records and CDs when promotional copies were given away? Sure most went to radio stations for airplay, but others were given away. Did the artist get any money for those copies or was that part of the record companies' marketing budget?
- spullara 11y ago
  The artists paid for those copies themselves when they paid back the record companies for marketing.
michaelcampbell 11y ago
> Apple is being shitty by not paying for something they're making money on How are they making money on the free trial, during the trial?
- aleem 11y ago
  (1) subscriber acquisition and (2) neutralising the competition. AOL for example printed and gave away for free, millions of CDs with free dialup access, spending as much as $35 on SAC (Subscriber Acquisition Cost) [1]: > How much did it cost AOL to distribute all those CDs back in the 1990s? > > Steve Case, co-founder and former chief executive officer and chairman of America Online: > > At that time I believe the average subscriber life was about 25 months and revenue was about $350 so we spent about $35 to acquire subscribers. As we were able to lower the cost of disks/trial/etc we were able to ramp up marketing. (Plus, we knew Microsoft was coming and it was never going to be easier or cheaper to get market share.) When we went public in 1992 we had less than 200,000 subscribers; a decade later the number was in the 25 million range. That helped drive our market capitalization up from $70 million at the time of the IPO to $150 billion when we decided to combine with Time Warner to accelerate our transition to broadband and diversify our revenue mix. [1]: http://www.quora.com/How-much-did-it-cost-AOL-to-distribute-all-those-CDs-back-in-the-1990s
bluthru 11y ago
>I think anyone can agree that Apple is being shitty by not paying for something they're making money on Apple AND the music industry are losing money during the 3 months, but they both stand to gain money after that. Apple has invested a lot of money in creating the service and running it for free for the trial period.
- ixtli 11y ago
  They are making artists pay for their user acquisition. I still call that profiting off of someone else's work without compensating them.

by ixtli 11y ago

donarb 11y ago

Exactly. And my question is forget the digital part of it. How did this work in the days of records and CDs when promotional copies were given away? Sure most went to radio stations for airplay, but others were given away. Did the artist get any money for those copies or was that part of the record companies' marketing budget?

spullara 11y ago
The artists paid for those copies themselves when they paid back the record companies for marketing.

michaelcampbell 11y ago

> Apple is being shitty by not paying for something they're making money on How are they making money on the free trial, during the trial?

aleem 11y ago
(1) subscriber acquisition and (2) neutralising the competition. AOL for example printed and gave away for free, millions of CDs with free dialup access, spending as much as $35 on SAC (Subscriber Acquisition Cost) [1]: > How much did it cost AOL to distribute all those CDs back in the 1990s? > > Steve Case, co-founder and former chief executive officer and chairman of America Online: > > At that time I believe the average subscriber life was about 25 months and revenue was about $350 so we spent about $35 to acquire subscribers. As we were able to lower the cost of disks/trial/etc we were able to ramp up marketing. (Plus, we knew Microsoft was coming and it was never going to be easier or cheaper to get market share.) When we went public in 1992 we had less than 200,000 subscribers; a decade later the number was in the 25 million range. That helped drive our market capitalization up from $70 million at the time of the IPO to $150 billion when we decided to combine with Time Warner to accelerate our transition to broadband and diversify our revenue mix. [1]: http://www.quora.com/How-much-did-it-cost-AOL-to-distribute-all-those-CDs-back-in-the-1990s

bluthru 11y ago

>I think anyone can agree that Apple is being shitty by not paying for something they're making money on Apple AND the music industry are losing money during the 3 months, but they both stand to gain money after that. Apple has invested a lot of money in creating the service and running it for free for the trial period.

ixtli 11y ago
They are making artists pay for their user acquisition. I still call that profiting off of someone else's work without compensating them.