Tomas Chlebek Yesterday it was announced that Apple has signed deals with two of the largest groups of independent record companies, Merlin Network and Beggars Group. This happened after the conditions changed. Originally, record companies and publishers were not to receive anything for the three-month trial period, Sunday however, there was a turnaround. But it was still not clear what exactly it meant - Eddy Cue announced that Apple would pay record companies for the trial period, but not how much.
The big question was whether it would be as much as the paid accounts, which Cue's simple statement suggested, or less. Now it turns out that it will be less how they report NY Times. For each play of a song during the free trial period, the record label receives 0,2 cents ($0,002) and the music publisher receives 0,047 cents ($0,00046). That seems like very little, but it's almost the same as what they get from Spotify for one non-paying user's play.
Record labels and publishers receive 70% of Spotify's earnings for plays from a paying user, and half of that, or 35%, for plays from a non-paying user. Apple, on the other hand, will pay for playback within the paid period 71,5% of earnings in the US and an average of 73% in the rest of the world. In addition, paying users can be expected to be much more with Apple Music, since after the three-month trial period they will only have access to Beats 1 and Connect.
Spotify will offer non-paying users unlimited music playback even after the month-long trial, but ads will be added after that. Currently, Spotify also offers a three-month trial in the United States for a reduced price of $0,99. Free access to the full version of Spotify has now – apparently in response to the arrival of Apple Music – been extended for several countries to two months, customers in the Czech Republic will pay 0,99 euros for the first two months. The option to use Spotify Premium for free for a month has therefore been cancelled. This newly introduced offer is valid until July 7th.
In the case of Apple Music, the stated conditions will apply to all record companies and publishers who sign a contract with Apple. This will not repeat the YouTube affair from the second half of last year, when some smaller independent companies complained that the bigger ones were offered much better conditions.
I'm an apple person, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Spotify and Deezer on this one. They were the first, just as Apple had once been the first.