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Apple Tells Labels, Unilaterally, That It's Increasing Song Previews To 90 Seconds
from the who's-going-to-sue-first? dept
A couple months ago, rumors made the rounds that Apple was going to double the length of song previews in iTunes from 30 to 60 seconds. An expected announcement did not appear, however, apparently because the music publishers (who in the past have already claimed -- without success -- that Apple should pay performance fees on those 30 second previews) felt Apple first needed to get permission from them, as well as the labels. So it's interesting to see that, at least with the record labels, Apple appears to be taking an aggressive approach, sending out letters simply telling labels that their deals have changed and song previews will now be 90 seconds:
It'll be interesting to see if Apple did the same thing with publishers... because you'd have to imagine that the publishers would quickly file a lawsuit if that's the case. According to Greg Sandoval, over at News.com, Apple is still negotiating with the publishers. That article includes a typically ridiculous quote from Rick Carnes of the Songwriter's Guild:
"It's like giving away ice cream samples--someone has to pay the cost," said Rick Carnes, president of the Songwriters Guild of America. "I think it would be a good thing for consumers to go to 90 seconds. But they're tripling the amount of time, and they want it for free. I think there ought to be compensation. I believe anytime you use music, you ought to reward the people making the music."Does Rick really believe that? If so, the Songwriters should fire him as their leader. What he should be looking for is what will maximize the revenue overall, not what will maximize the revenue per use. If you get paid per use, and it means shorter previews -- but that means many fewer sales and less overall money for the artists, then Carnes with his "anytime you use, you pay" philosophy is doing serious harm to the songwriters. And, of course, the actual evidence goes against Carnes. Studies have shown that such longer previews increases purchasing, but the publishing folks and the songwriters like Carnes are more interested in licensing than in direct sales anyway (even if that's really short-sighted). It's too bad that the Songwriters Guild would be represented by someone without their best interests in mind.
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Reader Comments (rss)
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I preview all my music on YouTube anyway, so I can actually hear the full song. There have been far too many times that a 10 second string of bad lyrics, or random insert sounds has absolutely ruined a song for me, and I don't buy music that I won't enjoy listening to several times.
Of course, limiting preview times fits in rather well with radio-played music. Most pop music is ridiculously repetitive, with lyrics that are terrible when you actually pay attention to them.
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Who's paying for the sample?
Really? The real question here is bandwith and storage and who pays for that. If it's Apple, then what this is really like is having your distributor give you free ingredients, equipment, and labor to make extra ice cream to give away free samples to sell more of your ice cream.
And this is bad for who?
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Re: Who's paying for the sample?
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I think the companies are just being dumb for the sake of being dumb at this point.
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I would like to ask him right away - do you pay the maker of your car EVERY time you drive it? Do you really pay to architects and builders of your home EVERY time you come home? How about paying to clothes designers and taylors every time you get dressed?
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I had this flash back just now.
Which is probably what Rick Carnes of the Songwriter's Guild would actually want since the previews are not getting paid for.
Or would that lead to a per note fee request?
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So, 1/3 second samplings can now be accurately billed for!
; P
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But then rap would be free! I kid, I kid.
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What about bad music?
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What they are really afraid of...
One flaw with his logic is giving out ice cream samples is giving out a finite resource so of course it gets paid for. Giving out a sample of 1's and 0's is an infinite resource, so why pay for it? Samples don't cost anybody anything except maybe iTunes who hopes to produce sales.
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Re: What they are really afraid of...
And as for that ice cream analogy. A sample clip of a song can be heard by people for all of eternity and the only cost would be server maintenance. On the other hand Cold Stone can only give away so many sample spoons of ice cream before the bucket goes empty. So unless this guy is really trying to say that the maintenance on server that can hold sample clip for all eternity (or at least several years) is on par with a bucket of ice cream that only lasts a few hours he doesn't know his analgies.
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Re: What they are really afraid of...
Given out free samples of crap tasting ice cream won't get you any more "sucker" sales. People will try the free sample, spit it out and go to your competitor to get some real ice cream.
He's thinking the exact same thing will happen with 90 second previews and to make up for the loss in revenue from lost "sucker" sales, he wants some compensation.
Makes sense really.
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Links please.
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"I have altered our deal..."
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And of course the ONLY reason for Apple to do this is to increase sales.
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Love/Hate relationship w/Apple
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Re: Love/Hate relationship w/Apple
No matter how consumer friendly, Apple are hardly likely to fight for something that *reduces* their iTunes revenue unless it somehow increased their hardware sales. That's unlikely with increasing preview length, so they literally have no reason to fight for it unless they expect download sales to increase!
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Erm, yeah... the people supplying the raw materials and shipping costs used. In this case - Apple, who are supplying the server space, bandwidth and administration. It costs the labels absolutely nothing, and costs the songwriters less - what extra costs are incurred by song-writers apart from the mythical "more people might have paid"? Even if you accept the stupid apples-to-oranges comparison of physical goods, it still makes no sense as an argument.
"I believe anytime you use music, you ought to reward the people making the music"
Again, for the utter morons who seem to be in charge of this industry: the use they are putting it is FREE ADVERTISING FOR YOUR PRODUCT. The only reason why people would listen to the free sample instead of buying the product would be if 90 seconds is more than enough - in which case you have a shoddy product. If your song-writing produces less than 90 seconds of a song that's worth listening to, that's not Apple's problem.
For others, it's a better way to sample the music on offer, especially for those outside of the mainstream pop arena where 30 seconds is woefully inadequate to make sure you have the right song (dance fans often can't tell if they have the right remix in 30 seconds, for example, as the 6 - 9 minute tracks often have long intros (1-2 minutes) before the main beat/melody kicks in).
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Mmmm... ice cream...
This is funny because giving away ice cream samples is actually great for business--I know that when I go to an ice cream place that lets you have small free samples of a bunch of flavors before you decide, I almost always end up buying a 3-4 scoop large, whereas when the store doesn't let you try samples, I usually end up with a 1-2 scoop small/medium of just a flavor or two that I'm sure I'll like.
Of course, here, unlike with ice cream where the samples actually cost something, the samples cost basically nothing to provide.
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Apple is guessing wrong...
90 second previews will have no impact on sales as long as publishers keep churning out the same homogenized crap.
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I wonder who does this "apple" thing.
In a way, it's like comparing Mike Ho to Mike Masnick. Simply no comparison.
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Same old story
The main 'disadvantage' I see to CwF/RtB is that it requires a major, continued investment of energy; you have to stay connected and keep giving fans reasons to buy. Which is not a problem for those at the ground level (i.e. musicians) because that's what their passion is, but when you're a fat cat exec, then it's way too much effort.
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oohh
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Also, Mike, each of the words "Studies have shown" should've linked to one of those studies, for maximum disprovage.
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Then the station turns around and charges someone who is not a record producer to put their recording on the same radio station(the recording may even have a song in it) and we call this "Advertising".
Seems to me Apple should be charging the record companies for 90 seconds worth of advertising.
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Actually, they don't. Radio stations (of the non-internet kind) do not pay royalties to record companies, they only pay songwriters and publishers.
I'm betting that's why publishers believe they deserve a piece of this pie. The "advertising" justification doesn't work for radio, so (they believe) it shouldn't work for any form of promotion.
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why only part of a song
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You can be sure that if iTunes track sales suddenly tank because everyone wants to listen to streaming snippets, then they will revert to shorter samples.
On the other hand I expect sales will certainly increase.
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