On May fourth we posted a report titled "Apple Painted as an Evil Force against Freemium Music Services," and followed up with a report on May eleventh titled "Spotify's Pathetic Freemium Statistics Justifies the Move to Kill Off such Music Streaming Services." In the latter report we noted that "by the very statistics from Spotify, we're able to see that freemium music streaming is a backward move – back to basically ripping off music artists all over again – and it has to stop." Today Apple's Jimmy Iovine pounded the drum to kill off the damaging Freemium business model.

Jimmy Iovine thinks the music industry is rotting and the once-great album is taking a beating, and it's all the fault of free music. The prolific record producer and Apple Music executive laid out his position in typically bombastic fashion at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco today. Iovine wants the music industry to look to Apple and the team it acquired from Beats — himself and Dr. Dre included — to help save our culture from those that want to parcel it out for no cost.

"Free is a real issue. This whole thing about freemium, maybe at one time we needed it. But now it's a shell game," Iovine said. It's a dig at Apple Music competitor Spotify, which offers its streaming service as both a paid subscription and a free tier with advertising. "These companies are building an audience on the back of the artist." Iovine added that Apple could easily amass hundreds of millions of users if it were willing to offer a free tier for Apple Music. But considering the service as it is now, he thinks he and the company have "built something powerful enough that it will work."

The future of music, according to Iovine, is looking pretty grim as more and more artists are forced to subsist on large-scale touring to earn money. Figuring out a way to compensate everyone is the reason he joined Apple, which "brought in 300 lunatics" capable of agreeing on a common agenda. "We always waited for somebody to come out of the woods and do distribution for us," he said of his record company days. "That doesn't work because the tech companies will come out and ask you to do it for free." For more on this, read the full report from The Verge

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 Side note: See the Vanity Fair report behind the video above.