5 ms·

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that the only reason Apple caved is that the dollar amount was too little to be worth any amount of negative PR. Appl

by exelius 11y ago

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that the only reason Apple caved is that the dollar amount was too little to be worth any amount of negative PR. Apple is a $300 billion/yr company. They will not risk that revenue stream (which is largely based on their positive brand image) for a few points of margin on a product that will probably never be more than 0.01% of their revenue. Kudos to Apple for recognizing that this is something they absolutely don't care about. The value of their brand is worth more than this. I just worry about the volume of new products coming out of Apple these days and wonder how much care and thought goes into them.

TillE 11y ago
That's pretty much it. It's a modest marketing investment which probably makes them look better than if they'd just done the right thing in the first place. I doubt it was calculated like that from the start, but that must be how it looks to them now.
- exelius 11y ago
  Yeah, my guess is that their legal department negotiated the hell out of these contracts with the labels (which is what they're supposed to do) and obtained a concession. Someone at the labels probably went to Taylor Swift about this and told her what was happening, knowing that she would cause a public stink about it and Apple would cave. Anyway, it's not as if Apple and the labels have a cozy relationship -- so all's fair in love, war and contract negotiations. I'm sure Apple has plenty of other pricing / payment levers they can use to claw back most of what they're losing anyway (which probably isn't much at all).
  - micampe 11y ago
    > Someone at the labels probably went to Taylor Swift about this and told her what was happening I think you are painting her as more naive than she is. She’s been critical of streaming services in the past, I’m sure she (and her entourage/business partners) were following Apple’s announcement closely without the labels telling them anything.
    - exelius 11y ago
      Yeah, by "went to Taylor Swift" I really meant "went to her business manager" or whoever. She's actually pretty damn business savvy, though when your mom is a marketing executive and your dad is an investment banker, a little will rub off.
acron0 11y ago
I'm afraid I agree with the alternative sentiment, that is to say that this whole thing is a 'PR hoax'. Kudos to Apple for playing the game and coming out looking like the benevolent and merciful master, humbled by the pleas of his peons.
- exelius 11y ago
  No company will ever intentionally bring its contract terms into the public spotlight. Not to mention the amount of coordination this would take is just too risky for a PR stunt. Apple would have been better off just paying Taylor Swift some money for exclusive streaming rights. It's not like they need to save money through use of guerrilla marketing.
  - takeda 11y ago
    It still helps them to look better against already established Spotify.
    - exelius 11y ago
      Yeah, they reacted well. I just don't think it was planned this way from the start.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- modfodder 11y ago
  Having worked in Advertising for the last 10 years including a tiny bit with Apple (freelancing) I have a hard time believing this was a 'PR hoax'. Advertising and PR at that level is extremely conservative and taking a risk like that would get someone fired even if the result was beneficial. Look at Apple's campaigns and you see well designed but generally very conservative creative direction that goes through so many reviews it dulls any edge. They are risk averse enough they will finish multiple spots with the intent of choosing one (because they aren't 100% sold on creative direction) rather than risk reaching a deadline without having approved deliverables (the only account I've ever worked on that does this). This doubles and triples a campaign's production budget without any tangible benefit. They will become even more conservative as they move more of their Ad creative in house. The other evidence that goes against the 'hoax theory' is the fact that Taylor's 1989 album still will not be available on Apple Music at launch (from everything I've read). If they were designing this huge PR stunt wouldn't it end with Taylor agreeing to release her latest album on their service?
dba7dba 11y ago
Oh so true that $ amount was so little to risk damage to their PR.
higherpurpose 11y ago
The Apple Watch doesn't inspire much confidence in Apple's future products. And I'm not talking about iPhones and iPads and Macs here. Those are "easy". But Apple Watch, Apple Car, Apple VR and whatever else they might want to launch in the future - I doubt they will be "Jobs-quality". And by that I don't just mean whether or not they will use premium materials. But whether the "product" package makes sense or works as well as it should.
- exelius 11y ago
  I don't think there are many mass-market products out there left to be created that don't involve insane amounts of hard science R&D. By that I mean products that are so flexible as to be universally useful (i.e. the smartphone). Any revolutionary consumer product at this point is going to require a civilization-level scientific breakthrough. I think what we have now in tech in general is a long tail of products catering to different use cases. The Apple Watch is one of those -- and it's not for everyone. Apple realizes that, which is why their sales targets for the watch were pretty low by Apple standards. Will Apple sell 100 million watches? Probably not. You see this in a bunch of other areas as well; IoT, virtual reality, etc. None of the use cases is universal enough to rise to the level of a smartphone; but there's a big enough market to support innovation.

by exelius 11y ago

TillE 11y ago

That's pretty much it. It's a modest marketing investment which probably makes them look better than if they'd just done the right thing in the first place. I doubt it was calculated like that from the start, but that must be how it looks to them now.

exelius 11y ago
Yeah, my guess is that their legal department negotiated the hell out of these contracts with the labels (which is what they're supposed to do) and obtained a concession. Someone at the labels probably went to Taylor Swift about this and told her what was happening, knowing that she would cause a public stink about it and Apple would cave. Anyway, it's not as if Apple and the labels have a cozy relationship -- so all's fair in love, war and contract negotiations. I'm sure Apple has plenty of other pricing / payment levers they can use to claw back most of what they're losing anyway (which probably isn't much at all).
- micampe 11y ago
  > Someone at the labels probably went to Taylor Swift about this and told her what was happening I think you are painting her as more naive than she is. She’s been critical of streaming services in the past, I’m sure she (and her entourage/business partners) were following Apple’s announcement closely without the labels telling them anything.
  - exelius 11y ago
    Yeah, by "went to Taylor Swift" I really meant "went to her business manager" or whoever. She's actually pretty damn business savvy, though when your mom is a marketing executive and your dad is an investment banker, a little will rub off.

acron0 11y ago

I'm afraid I agree with the alternative sentiment, that is to say that this whole thing is a 'PR hoax'. Kudos to Apple for playing the game and coming out looking like the benevolent and merciful master, humbled by the pleas of his peons.

exelius 11y ago
No company will ever intentionally bring its contract terms into the public spotlight. Not to mention the amount of coordination this would take is just too risky for a PR stunt. Apple would have been better off just paying Taylor Swift some money for exclusive streaming rights. It's not like they need to save money through use of guerrilla marketing.
- takeda 11y ago
  It still helps them to look better against already established Spotify.
  - exelius 11y ago
    Yeah, they reacted well. I just don't think it was planned this way from the start.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
modfodder 11y ago
Having worked in Advertising for the last 10 years including a tiny bit with Apple (freelancing) I have a hard time believing this was a 'PR hoax'. Advertising and PR at that level is extremely conservative and taking a risk like that would get someone fired even if the result was beneficial. Look at Apple's campaigns and you see well designed but generally very conservative creative direction that goes through so many reviews it dulls any edge. They are risk averse enough they will finish multiple spots with the intent of choosing one (because they aren't 100% sold on creative direction) rather than risk reaching a deadline without having approved deliverables (the only account I've ever worked on that does this). This doubles and triples a campaign's production budget without any tangible benefit. They will become even more conservative as they move more of their Ad creative in house. The other evidence that goes against the 'hoax theory' is the fact that Taylor's 1989 album still will not be available on Apple Music at launch (from everything I've read). If they were designing this huge PR stunt wouldn't it end with Taylor agreeing to release her latest album on their service?

dba7dba 11y ago

Oh so true that $ amount was so little to risk damage to their PR.

higherpurpose 11y ago

The Apple Watch doesn't inspire much confidence in Apple's future products. And I'm not talking about iPhones and iPads and Macs here. Those are "easy". But Apple Watch, Apple Car, Apple VR and whatever else they might want to launch in the future - I doubt they will be "Jobs-quality". And by that I don't just mean whether or not they will use premium materials. But whether the "product" package makes sense or works as well as it should.

exelius 11y ago
I don't think there are many mass-market products out there left to be created that don't involve insane amounts of hard science R&D. By that I mean products that are so flexible as to be universally useful (i.e. the smartphone). Any revolutionary consumer product at this point is going to require a civilization-level scientific breakthrough. I think what we have now in tech in general is a long tail of products catering to different use cases. The Apple Watch is one of those -- and it's not for everyone. Apple realizes that, which is why their sales targets for the watch were pretty low by Apple standards. Will Apple sell 100 million watches? Probably not. You see this in a bunch of other areas as well; IoT, virtual reality, etc. None of the use cases is universal enough to rise to the level of a smartphone; but there's a big enough market to support innovation.