“Just days before Apple Inc. plans to reveal a music streaming service, the company is still negotiating with record labels over terms,” Lucas Shaw and Tim Higgins report for Bloomberg.
“The labels are pushing to get a larger chunk of revenue than they receive under their current deals with Spotify Ltd., a competing streaming service, people familiar with the negotiations said,” Shaw and Higgins report. “Both sides want to complete a deal before Apple’s June 8 annual event in San Francisco for more than 5,000 developers, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the talks are continuing.”
“The labels take 55 percent of Spotify’s monthly $9.99 rate, and publishers take about 15 percent,” Shaw and Higgins report. “Labels are pushing for closer to 60 percent from Apple, the people said.”
MacDailyNews Take: Why in the name of Jobs would these labels think Apple should pay more than Spotify which will quickly be supplanted by Apple Music?
“Apple’s new music app will be home to the subscription service, downloads and a revamped version of iTunes radio, the people said. It will include some exclusive, behind the scenes video,” Shaw and Higgins report. “The app will also feature artist pages — mostly seen as being promotional — that they can use to host videos, songs and other things for free. This is part of a program called Apple Connect. Apple will compensate the artists and labels for songs it gives away, as it has done with iTunes’ “Free Song of the Week” feature.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Down to the wire! However, this is par for the course and has happened more times than not for Apple’s major new services (TV show sales via iTunes, for example).
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
SEE ALSO:
Apple planning to change 70/30 iTunes revenue split – June 5, 2015
Apple Music to offer users three months free; Apple to largely abandon 15-year-old iTunes brand – June 5, 2015
All-new Apple Music subscription service, rebuilt iTunes Radio to arrive with iOS 8.4 in late June – June 5, 2015
I continue to fail to understand why Apple doesn’t create something, let in those that want in, and make those that don’t pay to get in later.
Because it’s nice to start off with a more significant BANG!
That’s right. Apple thinks, and behaves, different. Formed by svengali and fashionista Steve Jobs, it is a more of a drama queen, a pied piper, an unconventional outfit that perplexes even its fans with the zany things it does. Stock analysts sure don’t get Apple, and veteran tech writers are constantly stumbling into tripwires and seeing ghosts. In a world of corporate sameness, Apple provides an element of surprise. Without that, commerce is a dead zone.
Because if it’s subscription-based, people aren’t going to want to pay a lot for a service offering otherwise limited content; and even if Apple offered a much lower initial price at launch, when Apple added new services and thus needed to charge more, it would be hard to do that without leaving a bad taste with the average consumer who now sees a price increase, it would be looked at unfavorably even if there is more content.
Then again, another article mentions a 3 month trial, if that were the case it would buy Apple another 3 months to get more content, but until then people will still be seeing the price tag and the lacking content.