“Apple’s much-anticipated music streaming service has hit a stumbling block as label owners are split over the terms for what industry executives have dubbed ‘iRadio,'” Robert Cookson, Robert Budden, and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson report for The Financial Times.
“Despite signing up Universal Music, the largest of the record label majors, the iPhone maker is still negotiating terms with Sony Music, the second-largest recorded music group, while it is close to reaching agreement with Warner Music according to people with knowledge of the discussions,” Cookson, Budden, and Edgecliffe-Johnson report. “Some music industry executives argue that cash-rich Apple should pay a higher rate than Pandora, which had 70m ‘active listeners’ in April, because of its broader ambitions for iRadio. These include using data it already has from hundreds of millions of iTunes users to predict the selection of tracks they will enjoy, and a plan to allow listeners to purchase songs seamlessly via the iTunes store.”
MacDailyNews Take: Only in La La Land would providing a seamless way to allow the music labels to sell their product be a reason to make Apple pay higher royalties. Apple is doing the music industry a favor! Why do the music cartels continue to act like every bit of their product isn’t available for the price of a couple mouse clicks?
Cookson, Budden, and Edgecliffe-Johnson report, “Apple’s iTunes store is the music industry’s largest source of digital revenues, even as streaming has grown and download growth has stalled. Apple earned an estimated $4.3bn from music downloads in 2012, of which $3.4bn was paid to music labels, according to Horace Dediu, an analyst at Asymco.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]