Anton Newcombe, the frontman of the psych rock band The Brian Jonestown Massacre, claimed in a series of recent tweets that Apple threatened to remove his band’s music from iTunes, if he and the band refused to comply to the new royalty policy from the company’s streaming service.
Although Apple is a bit late to the game with their release of a steaming platform, Apple Music, when compared to other streaming music services, Consequence of Sound notes that the tech and music giant may be “trying to bully its way to the top.”
These observations raise the question, what do we really know about the Apple Music program?
A leaked contract appeared on DigitalMusicNews.com, and it featured set of terms for the company’s initial three-month trial, which is the time frame that users can access the entire platform free of charge. During these months, according to Consequence of Sound, “rights owners will receive 0% royalties.” And, that is not typo.
The contract that appeared online states, “For Trial Users, and for Comp Accounts that iTunes provides on a gratis basis, no license or royalty fees, including Fees, will be due to Company.”
The above statement has been interpreted to mean that any artist who releases new music between Apple Music’s launch date (June 30th, 2015) and September 30th, 2015, will not be compensated for their material.
After that three-month trial is over, Apple Music will compensate rights holders by paying them “58% on subscription revenues earned on Apple Music, including individual ($9.99/mo) and family ($14.99/mo) accounts,” according to DigitalMusicNews.
In a June 15th article, Apple responded to this claim, and stated Apple Music “will be paying 71.5 percent of streaming revenues back to rights owners,” within the United States, according to DigitalMusicNews. And, “Outside the US, the number will fluctuate, but will average around 73 percent,” Apple iTunes Content Vice President Robert Kondrk told Re/Code in an interview.
Newcombe is not the first artist to be critical about the media giant; however, he is seemingly the first to step forward and claim that he was told by an Apple representative that he would see all of his band’s music removed, if he refused to accept Apple Music’s policy of not paying out royalties during their first three-months of operation.
The Brian Jonestown Massacre frontman took to Twitter to vent his distaste in a series of angry messages. He refers to Apple as a “devil” and a “satanic corporation,” in them. And, despite the fact that he tagged an unofficial Apple Twitter account in the flurry of messages, Newcombe maintains that an official representative of the company contacted him. Check out the tweets, below.
Lastly, Consequence of Sound reached out to Apple for their take on Newcombe’s claims, and a company representative has “refuted” his claims, and stated that “artists are free to choose whether or not to be part of the subscription service (including the “three-month trial”) without any repercussions,” according to an update posted to Consequence of Sound on Wednesday June 17th, 2015.
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