Taylor Swift Gets Apple Music to Pay Up
On Sunday morning, Taylor Swift took Apple to task for the royalty agreement on its news music streaming service. Her open letter on Tumblr, titled “To Apple, Love Taylor,” said, “I’m sure you are aware that Apple Music will be offering a free 3 month trial to anyone who signs up for the service. I’m not sure you know that Apple Music will not be paying writers, producers, or artists for those three months. I find it to be shocking, disappointing and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company.”
Related Link: How the Video Game Industry Is Failing Its Fans
“Three months is a long time to go unpaid, and it is unfair to ask anyone to work for nothing,” the pop singer argued on the behalf of music-makers everywhere, many of whom had voiced their discontent with the royalty policy. She concluded her letter saying, “We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.”
It was a sentiment shared by many independent music artists and producers. Just a few weeks earlier, the American Association for Independent Music had chimed in, “Since a sizable percentage of Apple’s most voracious music consumers are likely to initiate their free trials at launch, we are struggling to understand why rights holders would authorize their content on the service before October 1st.”
It took less than 24 hours for the “historically progressive and generous company” to respond via Twitter, and it didn’t wait until morning to make its announcement. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, personally called Swift to deliver the news before tweeting at 11:29 p.m., “#AppleMusic will pay artists for streaming, even during customers’ free trial period.”
Cue followed up with a feel-good response a minute later: “We hear you @taylorswift13 and indie artists. Love, Apple.” Later, Cue said that the company will pay artists on a per stream basis during the free trial period, although Cue declined to say what the rate would be. Once the free introductory period is over, Apple Music will pay music owners 71.5 percent of Apple Music’s overall subscription revenue in the United States.
Swift tweeted her response and addressed it to her fans and supporters: “I am elated and relieved. Thank you for your words of support today. They listened to us.”
Related Link: Apple Muscles Into Streaming Music Market
Swift’s crusade on social media showed the increasing weight that collective opinions on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook can have to force a change in corporate policy and direction. In a comic echo of that power, BuzzFeed promptly put together a list of 18 more issues Swift could fix through the power of social media, ranging from the battery life of iPhones to the size of Pringles cans.
Apple Music is launching on June 30, offering users a free, three-month subscription period. After that, the service will charge $9.99 a month for individuals and $14.99 a month for families with up to six members.
Chart of the Day: SALT in the GOP’s Wounds
The stark and growing divide between urban/suburban and rural districts was one big story in this year’s election results, with Democrats gaining seats in the House as a result of their success in suburban areas. The GOP tax law may have helped drive that trend, Yahoo Finance’s Brian Cheung notes.
The new tax law capped the amount of state and local tax deductions Americans can claim in their federal filings at $10,000. Congressional seats for nine of the top 25 districts where residents claim those SALT deductions were held by Republicans heading into Election Day. Six of the nine flipped to the Democrats in last week’s midterms.
Chart of the Day: Big Pharma's Big Profits
Ten companies, including nine pharmaceutical giants, accounted for half of the health care industry's $50 billion in worldwide profits in the third quarter of 2018, according to an analysis by Axios’s Bob Herman. Drug companies generated 23 percent of the industry’s $636 billion in revenue — and 63 percent of the total profits. “Americans spend a lot more money on hospital and physician care than prescription drugs, but pharmaceutical companies pocket a lot more than other parts of the industry,” Herman writes.
Chart of the Day: Infrastructure Spending Over 60 Years
Federal, state and local governments spent about $441 billion on infrastructure in 2017, with the money going toward highways, mass transit and rail, aviation, water transportation, water resources and water utilities. Measured as a percentage of GDP, total spending is a bit lower than it was 50 years ago. For more details, see this new report from the Congressional Budget Office.
Number of the Day: $3.3 Billion
The GOP tax cuts have provided a significant earnings boost for the big U.S. banks so far this year. Changes in the tax code “saved the nation’s six biggest banks $3.3 billion in the third quarter alone,” according to a Bloomberg report Thursday. The data is drawn from earnings reports from Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.
Clarifying the Drop in Obamacare Premiums
We told you Thursday about the Trump administration’s announcement that average premiums for benchmark Obamacare plans will fall 1.5 percent next year, but analyst Charles Gaba says the story is a bit more complicated. According to Gaba’s calculations, average premiums for all individual health plans will rise next year by 3.1 percent.
The difference between the two figures is produced by two very different datasets. The Trump administration included only the second-lowest-cost Silver plans in 39 states in its analysis, while Gaba examined all individual plans sold in all 50 states.