blogs, articles, etc all over the globe were written about apple music, for free. would have been far more expensive to buy all that airtime than this little scandal.
so taylor swift gets more publicity, apple music is now an established brand name, everyone and their dog knows about their pricing model - holy shit. hats off to the apple team, playing the outrage-piano like no other.
a) "Oh gosh, apparently having the artists/labels taking the monetary risk for us for trying to acquire a strategic stranglehold on the music industry was bad, we should do the right thing!"
b) "Argh! the backlash is bigger than we anticipated and Taylor Swift is causing too much negative PR. Quickly, change our minds before our service and future music profits are doomed. We'll make it back some other way somewhere down the line"
Doing the right thing because you have to is better than not doing it I guess, but I tend to measure a company on whether they'd try the same thing again if they could get away with it... and Apple definitively would.
It's not like Apple desperately needs the PR and why risk bad one?
Perhaps what I should say is that orchestration seems like a plausible scenario to me. It seems to fit the facts and the outcome benefits both parties.
Remember when the iPhone debuted at $600 and no subsidy? People said it would never sell at that price. But of course a few did, and then Apple quickly cut the price to $400. Eventually it became $200+subsidy, just like any other smartphone.
Apple seems to start out with their preferred offer and see if it works. If not, they go to the next fallback position. That happens so quickly that it seems clear that they must anticipate it somewhat.
Apple has teams of people working through this stuff. So while you may be right that it was just a prepared backup plan, it also could've been the plan to begin with.
Regarding negativity risk. What risk? If you assume they planned this all along then how possibly this could be negative. The only risk they had if they would end up ignoring her.
This was a great PR stunt to make Apple look much better than a competitor and I'm afraid Swift was nothing more than a puppet there.
Do you really think that recording companies would allow Apple to just stream their music without any contracts in place? Or not including something so important as a part of it?
Why would she be so intent on getting involved with Apple's streaming service?
But yes that is part of the brilliance of Apple PR.
I suspect you haven't read Taylor Swift's letter, and I suggest you do. It's fairly short.
Ok. I have read the letter. But my original point still stands. The only reason Apple bothered to do anything was because Taylor Swift said it.
To come to your point. I don't completely buy the whole "Think about the indie artists!" angle either. She herself says that pretty much everyone she spoke to in the industry (she used the word "social circle") was displeased with Apple's system. I am pretty sure there is self-interest involved. I am also positive her record label is happy with the new arrangement as well.
It’s very hard to exactly predict how stories will develop. What if lots of other artists came out and publicly supported Taylor’s stance? Then, even if Taylor agreed to Apple’s next deal, the other artists might not. In which case, Apple finds itself in a pickle and nobody would be suggesting that this was coordinated – even if it was.
I mean, it's not even a trending story on Facebook or Twitter on Monday morning!
Given public presence and the way they are steering Apple Music, the personal response - regardless of planning - is less surprising.
They might have been going with the "shared risk" model of free up front play, but bigger payouts to the artists on the subscriptions - but still had their "Apple takes the risk" on the front end, then payouts are smaller on the back end.
Then when artists grumbled about the shared risk model, they kicked in with the alternative model.
edit : typos
And there's nothing to say Apple wont change its terms later on.
If they knew of HN it would be a flame war (to used a 90s reference) in here.
It also helps that she wrote a pretty compelling argument that Apple's free trial shouldn't come at the expense of artists.