Taylor Swift Gets Apple Music to Pay Up
On Sunday morning, Taylor Swift took Apple to task for the royalty agreement on its news music streaming service. Her open letter on Tumblr, titled “To Apple, Love Taylor,” said, “I’m sure you are aware that Apple Music will be offering a free 3 month trial to anyone who signs up for the service. I’m not sure you know that Apple Music will not be paying writers, producers, or artists for those three months. I find it to be shocking, disappointing and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company.”
Related Link: How the Video Game Industry Is Failing Its Fans
“Three months is a long time to go unpaid, and it is unfair to ask anyone to work for nothing,” the pop singer argued on the behalf of music-makers everywhere, many of whom had voiced their discontent with the royalty policy. She concluded her letter saying, “We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.”
It was a sentiment shared by many independent music artists and producers. Just a few weeks earlier, the American Association for Independent Music had chimed in, “Since a sizable percentage of Apple’s most voracious music consumers are likely to initiate their free trials at launch, we are struggling to understand why rights holders would authorize their content on the service before October 1st.”
It took less than 24 hours for the “historically progressive and generous company” to respond via Twitter, and it didn’t wait until morning to make its announcement. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, personally called Swift to deliver the news before tweeting at 11:29 p.m., “#AppleMusic will pay artists for streaming, even during customers’ free trial period.”
Cue followed up with a feel-good response a minute later: “We hear you @taylorswift13 and indie artists. Love, Apple.” Later, Cue said that the company will pay artists on a per stream basis during the free trial period, although Cue declined to say what the rate would be. Once the free introductory period is over, Apple Music will pay music owners 71.5 percent of Apple Music’s overall subscription revenue in the United States.
Swift tweeted her response and addressed it to her fans and supporters: “I am elated and relieved. Thank you for your words of support today. They listened to us.”
Related Link: Apple Muscles Into Streaming Music Market
Swift’s crusade on social media showed the increasing weight that collective opinions on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook can have to force a change in corporate policy and direction. In a comic echo of that power, BuzzFeed promptly put together a list of 18 more issues Swift could fix through the power of social media, ranging from the battery life of iPhones to the size of Pringles cans.
Apple Music is launching on June 30, offering users a free, three-month subscription period. After that, the service will charge $9.99 a month for individuals and $14.99 a month for families with up to six members.
Budget ‘Chaos’ Threatens Army Reset: Retired General
One thing is standing in the way of a major ongoing effort to reset the U.S. Army, writes Carter Ham, a retired four-star general who’s now president and CEO of the Association of the U.S. Army, at Defense One. “The problem is the Washington, D.C., budget quagmire.”
The issue is more than just a matter of funding levels. “What hurts more is the erratic, unreliable and downright harmful federal budget process,” which has forced the Army to plan based on stopgap “continuing resolutions” instead of approved budgets for nine straight fiscal years. “A slowdown in combat-related training, production delays in new weapons, and a postponement of increases in Army troop levels are among the immediate impacts of operating under this ill-named continuing resolution. It’s not continuous and it certainly doesn’t display resolve.”
Pentagon Pushes for Faster F-35 Cost Cuts
The Pentagon has taken over cost-cutting efforts for the F-35 program, which has been plagued by years of cost overruns, production delays and technical problems. The Defense Department rejected a cost-saving plan proposed by contractors including principal manufacturer Lockheed Martin as being too slow to produce substantial savings. Instead, it gave Lockheed a $60 million contract “to pursue further efficiency measures, with more oversight of how the money was spent,” The Wall Street Journal’s Doug Cameron reports. F-35 program leaders “say they want more of the cost-saving effort directed at smaller suppliers that haven’t been pressured enough.” The Pentagon plans to cut the price of the F-35A model used by the Air Force from a recent $94.6 million each to around $80 million by 2020. Overall, the price of developing the F-35 has climbed above $400 billion, with the total program cost now projected at $1.53 trillion. (Wall Street Journal, CNBC)
Chart of the Day - October 6, 2017
Financial performance for insurers in the individual Obamacare markets is improving, driven by higher premiums and slower growth in claims. This suggests that the market is stabilizing. (Kaiser Family Foundation)
Quote of the Day - October 5, 2017
"The train's left the station, and if you're a budget hawk, you were left at the station." -- Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C.