App developers and content producers get emailed 'we are taking more out of your cut' or 'if you don't want us to show ads near your content, reply to this email with "opt out"'
Credit for throwing artists a bone. / Extended publicity for their new music service. / Credit for pleasing TS who has a lot of fans who would also be good customers for Apple
TS Gets:
Publicity / Sales for her new album / Credit for sticking up for artists
Seems like a win-win for both parties. I doubt the revenue lost would have been significant. Anyone have numbers?
What I meant to imply is that the PR is only valuable because it is a musician with the brand value (and public presence) of Taylor Swift.
And, what I mean by that is that if smaller brand musicians complained (as I think would have been inevitable) nothing would change until a larger brand also complained (which would also have been inevitable).
Seems far more likely that this exchange was orchestrated between Apple and TS.
App developers don't have a millionth of the star power.
What upsets me about the whole thing is that Taylor Swift is absolutely not representative of most musicians. Unlike most young artists, she actually owns the recording rights to her albums. Typically you have to complete a 3-album deal where the studio owns the recording rights before you can negotiate terms (and even then only if you're a major musician by that point); but when your father buys a studio and signs you to a deal you get to keep your recording rights.
Taylor Swift's situation is much more representative of an owner of a recording company than an artist. While she's worried about points on the distribution deal, most artists feel that they'll never make any real money off the albums as long as the studios own the rights and just want you to hear their music and start to engage with them in other ways (social media, live shows, YouTube, etc) that they CAN monetize. By paying artists so little for their recordings for so long, recording companies have caused artists to place very little value on the recordings themselves and look to monetize their careers in other ways.
Probably true, however remember Swift recently had the bout with Spotify, leading to the Spotify CEO revealing she was pulling in nearly $6 million a year from them.
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-taylor-swift-earned-...
He asserted her final cut was probably what she was stating, but Spotify's checks to her label were in original $6 million range payouts, and that she should take the issue up with her management if they are taking that much out of her cut.
She's very young, and probably didn't pay much attention to her contracts and such. Even still, 80% is a lot for a label to consume in "management" fees.
Taylor swift has made tons of product and has rights apparently because she does more work on her music than most artists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift#2004.E2.80.9308:_...
The only artists who really care about these streaming payments are already at the top of the food chain -- the vast majority of artists are just looking to get discovered. One could argue that the presence of big artists on these streaming services makes the platforms more valuable for artists at the bottom by drawing more users to them, but it definitely has created a situation where top artists' albums have value as a product themselves, while albums of lesser-known bands are essentially given away for free to try to build an audience.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9756009
TS simply agreed with a previously articulated view. She didn't invent the argument.
(edit: They already pulled adele from the contract talks from what I gather, presumably because XL is indeed one of those small labels that breaks original talent, but doesn't have the superstar/financial status of the majors to just eat a full quarter of earnings/working capital. And given how spiky a hit based industry is it might be even worse if one of these companies had to launch a once in a lieftime hit record in this window, etc).
With apps, because of the ecosystem isolations, Apple has no competition for access to THEIR user base (which is significant). So even if Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc have their own apps stores of significant size, they aren't competing for Apple's users and thus cannot offer better terms than Apple.
It is the same with Microsoft's App Store, where they literally pay developers money (or used to) so they port their apps over to the store.
[1] https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/i-do-not-agree-to-your-terms....
When has Apple contacted developers to increase the size of its cut? Amazon claims to match Apple's 70% but in fact charges book authors for download size and halves your 30% for books over $10 (which is ridiculous given expensive books should have higher margins).
When has Google informed you that you can opt out of having ads shown next to your content in search results?
The cut on Apple Music for musicians is reportedly going to be 71.5% of streaming revenue. Pretty similar.
So, your analogy or comparison here unfortunately doesn't hold water.