
Apple Music and Labels Investigated in Two States - digital55
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/technology/2-states-look-for-collusion-between-apple-music-and-major-labels.html
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datashovel
I 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.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "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."

Sorry but this is BS.

1\. Independent artists are empowered in the way that they can distribute
music in so many places online - getting people to listen is another matter.
Even if your music is good marketing it by yourself is very, very hard.

2\. Even artists who aren't part of a group (I'm thinking DJ's for example)
have to pay more than themselves. They don't travel alone and every live
musician usually has to pay a sound guy and probably a lighting guy.

3\. I think very few musicians care about getting wealthy - they just want to
make a living. They want to be able to play and make music 24/7\. Even
reaching that level is incredibly hard. I can't remember their name but there
was a Medium article posted here a while back by a band (quite a well known
indie band) who were trying to do just that. They sold out 1,000 seat theatres
around the country but the costs of putting on a show caught up with them.

Artists need labels. Maybe not in the form we've always known them but they
are still very important. I think it's also probably in the interests of
artists if one place becomes king in streaming. You can focus your efforts
there instead of having to distribute your music on all these streaming
services with their own social sides you must also contribute to.

~~~
eveningcoffee
You describe that labels could provide usable service for musicians.

Fine, but labels do not work like this. They work rather as investment banks
and their income does not come from service fees but from speculative bets in
hopes to find few musicians with very high returns.

I.e. musicians do not get a product from labels but are themselves a product.

~~~
danieldk
_Fine, but labels do not work like this. They work rather as investment banks
and their income does not come from service fees but from speculative bets in
hopes to find few musicians with very high returns._

Although some service fees would be reasonable (recording an album, pressing
small batches of CDs), most other things that labels offer are simply not
affordable for musicians who did not make it yet, e.g.: hiring a good producer
or setting up a nation-wide or world-wide PR campaign.

Although, it's not impossible to get there by slow, organic, growth, getting
an investment can be much more effective if you are good[1]. It's not all that
much different from starting a business.

[1] Of course, these days some labels do not pick up good musicians, but
pretty faces that can playback to music written by label's writers, recorded
with pitch correction, etc. But that's what a segment of the general public
wants.

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beedogs
Apple's a lot shittier of a company than many people seem to want to give them
credit for here.

~~~
skrowl
There'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.

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minthd
from 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
I'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
Yup.

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.

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baldfat
I 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.

~~~
JohnTHaller
It 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
I think you might be right. I didn't think about them being stupid enough to
actually say that in official circles.

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remarkEon
> 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
Basically. 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
Well 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
As a spokesperson for the label?

~~~
ethanbond
You'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?

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sdalfakj
How do you, as a wannabe monopoly, do business with a monopoly without
colluding with a monopoly?

~~~
josteink
While I agree apple is a significant and big actor, in what way are they a
monopoly?

~~~
minthd
Imessage has strong lock-in factor ,even for people who want to move to
android. I'm sure there are other things.

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Oletros
Android version of Apple Music not having a free version like the iOS/OS
X/Windows versions can be another factor in that probe?

~~~
Moto7451
There'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
[http://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
In 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.

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b1daly
This 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
You're arguing that this isn't important simply because there are other
important issues out there.

Surely two important issues can co-exist?

