Apple vice president Oliver Schusser, who leads Apple Music, TV+ and Apple’s sport content initiatives, made some grandiose comments last week in a sit-down interview with the president of the National Music Publishers’ Association, David Israelite. You can watch the conversation in full here.
Most notably, Schusser is asked what he would change about the music industry if he could do it all over again. He replies, “I think it’s crazy that 20 years in, we still offer music for free. It’s a terrible mistake … As a company, we look at music as art, and we would never want to give away art for free”.
Obviously, these pointed remarks are in reference to the free ad-supported tiers offered by Spotify, Amazon and other streaming services, although Schusser did not mention the rivals explicitly by name.
Schusser continues: “we’re the only service that doesn’t have a free tier, and that’s not because of the money or anything”. “We don’t have a free service and we will not have one. We have no plans to have one.”
Schusser then drew the comparison to Apple TV+, where viewers have to pay to watch the premium content. He noted that in January, Apple TV+ had the most successful show in the world, Severance, and that everyone who wanted to watch it had to pay. He is concerned that free music makes it a commodity, and devalues the art.
These comments drew rapturous applause from the audience of music publishers, who are currently frustrated about the diminishing royalties from music streaming. Most recently, they complained about the bundling of add-ons like audiobooks into Spotify and Amazon Music, which has resulted in lower revenues to artists.
Of course, promoting paid tiers is also firmly in Apple’s business interest, as a company which has traditionally struggled to grapple with advertising-based business models.
If you asked Spotify, they would argue they pay out billions to artists, more than any other service. They see the free service as a way to introduce more people to music in the first place, and convert them to paid tiers.
Watch the full interview here:
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