Jimmy Iovine used his appearance at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco to take swipes at Spotify and, in particular, to underline his hatred of free music streaming.
“Free is a real issue,” he said. “This whole thing about freemium, maybe at one time we needed it. But now it’s a shell game … These companies [offering a free music tier] are building an audience on the back of the artist.”
This isn’t the first time Apple has been outspoken about its dislike of free music. This summer, the company was examined by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission after allegedly pressuring music label partners to ditch support for Spotify’s free tier.
Vanity Fair panel moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times asked Iovine how Apple’s moral crusade to defend artists fits with the company’s brief spat with Taylor Swift concerning the proposed lack of artist royalties during Apple Music’s three-month free trial.
On-stage, Irvine argued that Apple, “moved like lightning and they did the right thing” after reading Taylor Swift’s open letter.
Ultimately, I think Apple is doing the right think by not having a free tier with its service. Charging $9.99 per month does mean that the service is unlikely to grow as quickly as it would otherwise, but this is just another iteration of the war Apple fought with iTunes against Kazaa and Napster in the early 2000s. In particular I’m reminded of this exchange with Steve Jobs during an Esquire interview in 2003.
Esquire: There’s a whole generation that thinks music is free.
Jobs: I don’t think that’s true. I talk to a lot of these kids. They don’t think it’s free. They know they’re stealing music.
Esquire: But is karma enough of a threat?
Jobs: No. Let me try explaining it another way. These kids are using the best product. Until yesterday, Kazaa was the best product. Why is that? Because the minute you get your music over the Internet and experience that instant gratification, there’s no going back. … I don’t blame these fifteen-year-old kids. I blame us — for not coming up with a better product that was legal. And so they’ve been using the best product out there, and what we have to do to compete is make a better product. And I believe people will gravitate to a better product.
Now that Apple Music’s three-month free trial is over, Apple just needs to concentrate on proving it’s the better service.
Source: The Verge
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
8 responses to “Jimmy Iovine: Free music streaming is hurting the industry”
How is the free Spotify/Pandora any different then listening to the radio, it’s paid for by ads. Its not like you can download the music and do whatever you want to it. I can’t understand the hate for freemium tiers when, short from being able to skip songs you don’t like, they are doing the same thing as FM radio.
Radio stations pay a much higher royalty rate than streaming services do.
That’s how they’re different.
That sounds like a problem for Spotify/Pandora and the music labels/artists to sort out. It’s not my problem that the music labels/artists allow a lower royalty rate to streaming services.
I also disagree with the author about comparing this to the iTunes war against Kazaa/Napster. No one is stealing music, this is all legal and people are getting reimbursed.
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That’s not the listeners’ fault. It’s not customer’s fault when the record labels failed to negotiate better streaming rates on behalf of their artists/clients. If you are using free-tier Spotify/Pandora, you are paying for the service through unskippable ads. Just as a radio listener shouldn’t know or care about the rates radio ads get or what ASCAP/BMI charge, free-tier listeners should not be made to feel like second-class citizens because we’re not popping $9.99 for premium service.
I tried Apple Music. It is not a better product. Despite spending time telling Apple what artists and genres I like – as well as providing Apple with my listening habits, via iTunes Match subscription (which I do pay for because I can readily see the value in it) – the “For You” suggestions were all for pop or hip-hop artists I have no interest in. (Am I the only one who thinks the record companies have something to do with that? Maybe a quid pro quo somewhere?) Further, I have nearly 29,000 songs in my iTunes library; there is very little “new” music worth listening to that I can’t hear on free-tier services. The last straw for me was when Apple Music began replacing tracks in my own library. Apple Music is just not that good for people with long-established iTunes libraries who don’t really care about music fads.
You’re absolutely right. You can’t even do playlists or any on demand really without paying, as far as I know. It is just radio for this generation.
Yet more proof of how Jobs was a visionary – because he was dead-on correct. Once Apple came out with Apple Music Spotify and Pandora became subpar products for me, mostly because of the way Apple Music makes getting the songs you actually want onto your device much simpler and easier, and has a larger (and more rapidly growing) catalog. Rather than spend money on albums I can just drop the price of a couple of Starbucks’ per month and have every album I could possibly want and then some. Pandora and Spotify aren’t bad products, per se, they just are no longer optimal if you’re an Apple user.
I disagree, for reasons mentioned above. I’m all in on Apple products – Mac, iPhone, AppleTV, iPad, etc. – and have found a monthly Apple Music subscription itself a sub-par offering compared to just having a $24.99 annual iTunes Match fee and a free Spotify account.