Apple Painted as an Evil Force against Freemium Music Services
The Verge is reporting today that "The Department of Justice is looking closely into Apple's business practices in relation to its upcoming music streaming service, according to multiple sources." The report further notes that "The Verge has learned that Apple has been pushing major music labels to force streaming services like Spotify to abandon their free tiers, which will dramatically reduce the competition for Apple's upcoming offering. DOJ officials have already interviewed high-ranking music industry executives about Apple's business habits."
The Verge further notes that "Apple has been using its considerable power in the music industry to stop the music labels from renewing Spotify's license to stream music through its free tier. Spotify currently has 60 million listeners, but only 15 million of them are paid users. Getting the music labels to kill the freemium tiers from Spotify and others could put Apple in prime position to grab a large swath of new users when it launches its own streaming service, which is widely expected to feature a considerable amount of exclusive content."
One music industry source reportedly stated that "All the way up to Tim Cook, these guys are cutthroat."
Yet the thing is, the report in some ways sounds to be taking the view of a particular source who hates Apple, be it Spotify or whoever, because there are others on record in the music industry that are not happy with freemium services either. In fact we covered this subject matter extensively back in March.
One aspect of our report covered the Guardian's interview with CEO of Ministry of Sound Lohan Presencer who took aim at audio services such as Spotify, Deezer and Rdio. If Ministry of Sound's boss had his way, there would be no free option for streaming music services.
Despite having settled his company's lawsuit with Spotify over playlist copyright infringement, Presencer remains a combative opponent of free streaming services – a point he made forcefully during a recent Mobile World Congress debate with representatives from music streaming services Deezer and Rdio.
It was made clear that the music labels had finally lost their patience supporting the freemium business model and artists like Taylor Swift weren't happy with the freebie streaming services model by lashing out that "Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for."
So the notion that it's evil Apple being the only one or the lone force against freemium tiers of streaming music services is a little too slanted by those who obviously want to continually give music away and hurt artists.
It's been hinted at in the press that it was Spotify's complaint to the European regulators that started their investigation into Apple on this issue and it's likely them again trying to get the DOJ to do the same in the U.S. Being that Apple is clearly not the only ones against freemium services, it's going to be hard for anyone to make the case it's an Apple driven issue. It's a music industry issue and they have the right to kill a service that they feel is harming the industry and its artists. It's the freemium services that are the ones acting out in the press on this issue and they only represent one thing: their own bottom line.
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