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Comment by w4 | Hacker News Reader

> The real question is - why is beggar's banquet afraid of giving their listeners a 3 month free trial?

Why do you consider it reasonable for Apple to use artists' IP, free, in order to acquire users for Apple's paid services?

EDIT: I also suspect that the free trial will create an enormous cash flow crunch for smaller labels when Apple Music releases. Consider the following: Apple Music will become available, for free, to all existing iTunes users for 3 months. You can expect that iTunes music purchases will nosedive after Apple Music's release, at least for those first months.

If you're a small indie label, it's likely that losing the lion's share of a full quarter of revenue from one of the largest music stores on earth (never mind the ripple effects on other stores) is going to represent a significant financial hardship. Hence their consternation over mandatory 3 month free streaming.

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> Why do you consider it reasonable for Apple to use artists' IP, free, in order to acquire users for Apple's paid services?

I don't and that's a false statement about what's happening. When the free trial ends, payments from the users are split with the artists. Both the artists and Apple benefit from the success of the service.

You could equally well say - "why should artists expect to user Apple's IP to market their music for free?"

> You could equally well say - "why should artists expect to user Apple's IP to market their music for free?"

Except that they don't. Apple takes a cut of each payment just like it does on the App Store.

"Artists using Apple's IP for free" is not what's going on here - Apple is stating it will not pay artists in an effort to subsidize its user acquisition efforts. If Apple were forgoing its portion of each subscription payment, while still paying artists their portion, no one would be complaining.

Let's put it this way: tomorrow, Apple announces that it will be introducing an "App Store Subscription." For $9.99/month users will receive unlimited access to all apps on the App Store. Developers will receive a share of each user's subscription payments in proportion to app usage. Apple simultaneously announces a 3 month free trial for all App Store accounts, and states that it will be making no payments to developers during that trial since users are not paying for it.

Do you feel that this is a fair arrangement?

I think this statement might be among the most profound crystallizations of a certain type of SV mindset that people outside that world find flabbergasting. Marketplaces do not exist without goods to sell. If you were to walk into a record store and mistake the store itself, and not the music, for being the main reason why people visit record stores, and that all of these recording artists are super lucky to be in this awesome store, well... I'd like to meet the person who thinks that, I guess. Maybe.

The problem is new releases. If I release an album at the start of the trial people will naturally listen to it a lot for a couple of months and then listen to other stuff - and now I've just lost out on revenue for the biggest selling period for that album (around the release). For the small labels this is enough to put them out of business.

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