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Tag: Royalties

  • Apple to Pay 0.247 Cents Per Stream During Apple Music Free Trial?

    Apple is set to pay labels 0.2 cents per stream during its Apple Music free trial period, which is set to kick off on June 30 and last up the three months.

    According to the New York Times, Apple worked out a royalty structure just a day after its decision to pay artists anything at all for music streamed during the new service’s free trial period.

    From the NYT:

    For each song that is streamed free, Apple will pay 0.2 cent for the use of recordings, a rate that music executives said was roughly comparable to the free tiers from services like Spotify. This rate does not include a smaller payment for songwriting rights that goes to music publishers; Apple is still negotiating with many publishers over those terms, several publishing companies confirmed on Wednesday.

    And according to Billboard, Apple may pay out an additional 0.047 cents per stream for rights, meaning Apple could pay 0.247 cents total per stream during the free trial period.

    This is at least comparable to a service like Spotify, which used a roughly 35% royalty structure for streams made by free tier users.

    Apple recently ironed out deals with independent labels after reversing course and agreeing to pay royalties for songs streaming during the upcoming free trial period.

    The Worldwide Independent Network endorsed the Apple Music deal, saying Apple Music is a good deal for artists.

    “I am pleased to say that Apple has made a decision to pay for all usage of Apple Music under the free trials on a per-play basis, as well as to modify a number of other terms that members had been communicating directly with Apple about. With these changes, we are happy to support and endorse the deal,” said WIN Chief Alison Wenham.

    “Apple has a long standing, deep rooted relationship with the music community and has always helped ensure artists get paid for their work. We think Apple Music provides artists with a business model that’s good for the long term and we look forward to its launch on June 30.”

    So apparently, the indies are ok with the rate.

  • Taylor Swift Explains Her Big Spotify Diss

    Taylor Swift Explains Her Big Spotify Diss

    As you may have heard, American sweetheart and creator of the only platinum-selling record of 2014 Taylor Swift yanked all of her music off Spotify earlier this week (save one song).

    Bummer for Taylor Swift fans who don’t buy albums anymore.

    Many have speculated as to why she made the move, but now she’s giving us the reason in her own words. In an interview with Yahoo Music, Swift said that she didn’t want to be part of Spotify’s “experiment” – and experiment which she feels in unfair to artists.

    “[M]usic is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment. And I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music. And I just don’t agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free,” she said.

    She continued:

    But I think it’s really still up for debate whether this is actual progress, or whether this is taking the word “music” out of the music industry. Also, a lot of people were suggesting to me that I try putting new music on Spotify with “Shake It Off,” and so I was open-minded about it. I thought, “I will try this; I’ll see how it feels.” It didn’t feel right to me. I felt like I was saying to my fans, “If you create music someday, if you create a painting someday, someone can just walk into a museum, take it off the wall, rip off a corner off it, and it’s theirs now and they don’t have to pay for it.” I didn’t like the perception that it was putting forth. And so I decided to change the way I was doing things.

    Industry experts predicted 1989 would sell 650k first week. You went and bought 1.287 million albums. AND IT'S GOT ME LIKE:

    Une vidéo publiée par Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) le

    If you read her July op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, none of this should be a surprise. Swift has been talking shit about Spotify for a while now.

    In that piece she lumped piracy and streaming into the same category, saying,

    “Piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently … music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is.”

    Meanwhile, Swift’s new album 1989 sold 1.287 million copies in it first week – making it the bestselling album of 2014 by a mile.

    “We hope she’ll change her mind and join us in building a new music economy that works for everyone. We believe fans should be able to listen to music wherever and whenever they want, and that artists have an absolute right to be paid for their work and protected from piracy. That’s why we pay nearly 70% of our revenue back to the music community,” said Spotify of her decision.

    Swift is nowhere near the only artist to have beef with Spotify – but her position as an incredibly popular one among younger generations makes her decision to go against the stream that much more interesting.

    Image via Taylor Swift, Instagram

  • Pandora Hikes Price, Cites Rising Royalty Rates

    Pandora Hikes Price, Cites Rising Royalty Rates

    Like most music streaming services, Pandora’s users are mostly the non-paying kind–the ones who are perfectly content to deal with some ads in order to avoid paying a monthly subscription fee. If you’re one of those 200 million+ people, you can breathe a sigh of relief–this doesn’t really affect you.

    But current annual subscribers and future subscribers to Pandora One, the company’s ad-free subscription tier, should know that the price of that subscription is going up. Not way up, but up nonetheless.

    New Pandora One subscribers will pay $5 a month for the service, up $1 from the current price of $4. If you currently subscribe to Pandora One on a month-by-month basis, your payment level will be unaffected (for now). You’re currently locked in at the $4 per month price.

    But if you’re a Pandora One subscriber who opts for the yearly renewal structure–that option is no longer available. Pandora is nixing the annual subscription option and switching all current annual subscribers to a $4 per month structure.

    What that amounts to is a $12 a year increase for those annual subscribers (it was $36 for a year’s chunk).

    Pandora cites rising royalties as the reason for the price hike.

    “We’ve been fortunate to be able to offer Pandora One at an affordable price since its debut in 2009 at $36 per year and later with the introduction of a monthly subscription for only $3.99 per month. Over this same period, the costs of delivering this service have grown considerably. For example, the royalty rates Pandora pays to performers via SoundExchange for subscription listening have increased 53% in the last five years and will increase another 9% in 2015,” says the company.

    If you were thinking about signing up for Pandora One to get rid of those pesky ads, now’s the time. If you do it before May, you can lock in the $4 a month price.

    “Our listeners are our top priority and, while this affects only a small percentage of our listeners (3.3 million subscribers of more than 250 million registered users total), we hope that you understand why we have taken these steps. Our goal is to continue to be your go-to internet radio destination and enable you to hear the music you love wherever and whenever you want.”

    Image via Pandora, Facebook