How much should Apple have to pay Sony if they use a song on iRadio, but a listener hates it so much that they immediately skip to the next track? A common sense answer would be ‘nothing’ but in the high stakes world of music industry legal mumbo jumbo, common sense doesn’t apply… and Apple and Sony Music’s disagreement over the matter might delay iRadio from launching with iOS 7.
Earlier this week, Google beat Apple to the punch by launching a streaming subscription music service before Cuperino could unveil its own offering, iRadio.
How did Google managed to do it? Apple has all the music industry clout, so how could Google swing a deal first? Because Google Play Music All Access is essentially a clone of services like Rdio and Spotify, and the contract terms of services like that are easy to copy.
Apple’s iRadio? It’s a wholly different beast.
Apple’s plans for an ‘iRadio’ streaming service are still being stalled by reluctant music labels, according to a report today from the Financial Times. Last month it was reported that Universal was about to partner with Apple, and the deal has allegedly been sealed between the two companies since then. Now Sony is demanding more money before it signs on.
Spotify has acquired Swedish music discovery startup Tunigo in an effort to compete with Twitter’s new music service, AllThingsD reports. Tunigo will continue to operate as normal for the time being, but all of the company’s employees will reportedly move into Spotify’s offices in Stockholm and New York to work on Spotify’s main music streaming service.
Have you ever wondered: if Apple makes billions of dollars off of music downloads, why are they supposedly planning on launching their own music streaming service, iRadio, later this year? Wouldn’t such a service actually lead to less downloads?
It’s a good question, and there’s a good answer.
Apple may be signing its first licensing deal with Universal Music Group (UMG) as soon as next week, according to several sources with knowledge of the matter, says The Verge. UMG and Apple are in the final stages of negotiations, and Warner Music is close behind, say those sources. All Apple needs now to complete the licensing for what the media has dubbed iRadio is an agreement with Sony Music Entertainment and other music publishers.
Apple is widely expected to launch a streaming music service later this year, perhaps this summer, with features similar to Pandora, assuming it can get all the licensing squared away for such a service.
Like a psychic, the bread and butter of most analysts is to make wild predictions to their clients and then, when they don’t come true, pretend like those predictions were never made to begin with. When that fails, another ploys analysts, like psychics, sometimes use is overly vague predictions that could literally be fulfilled by anything.
Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty’s latest bit of soothsaying falls into the latter cam: she claims that after meeting with Apple management recently, she feels quite certain that Apple could release a “killer app” this year. Only one, Katy?
According to “two people familiar with the matter,” Apple is super close to closing a deal with a couple of major music labels for its own streaming music service, one which is reportedly better than the deal that the labels are getting from rival service, Pandora.
While other reports have Apple “lowballing” the record industry on royalty rates of up to half what Pandora pays, CNET is reporting that new revenue options could make the iRadio deal better for labels in the long run.
Apple has been rumored to release a Spotify-like music streaming service for quite some time, but complicated licensing negations with the record labels have kept the product at bay. Multiple reports from this year alone have suggested that Apple is finally starting to gain momentum; it seems clear that some kind of ‘iRadio’ is in the pipeline.
Previous speculation has said that Apple wants to release its upcoming music service sometime in 2013, and now a new report says the company is “pushing hard” for a launch this summer.
As Apple continues to ramp up development on its new music streaming service, negotiations with record labels haven’t been going well.
Apple’s music streaming service is rumored to be similar to Pandora’s radio service, but rather than settling with the same royalty rate that Pandora enjoys, Apple is trying to lowball record labels into giving them a better deal.
This week's most...
Read our latest...
Cult of Mac is a daily news site that follows everything Apple. Our goal is to provide timely news, insightful analysis, helpful how-tos and honest reviews. Find out more about Cult of Mac.
Published in sunny San Francisco.
All times are in PDT (GMT-8).
