[jnks]

What's happening here is not a shift to net 90, and it's also not an attempt by Apple to rip any rightsholders off.

Instead, it appears Apple and the major labels believe that three free months of Apple Music threatens to hurt Spotify's userbase growth at a crucial time for Spotify (fundraising pre-IPO). The industry has lost its faith in freemium (Apple Music, trial aside, has no free tier) and either this will kill Spotify or get them in line.

The indies, who overall can't afford losing three months of revenue, are just caught in the cross fire.

[caractacus]

I think you're mistaken if you think that the majors would voluntarily relinquish three months of royalties from trials of Apple Music just to hurt Spotify, when they could simply pull their content from Spotify a la Taylor Swift to hurt it much more. This is Apple trying to push costs wherever they can and ignoring the indies during negotiation. It wouldn't be the first time that indies get the raw deal from a large corporate making decisions with the majors in mind.

[maxerickson]

The indies, who overall can't afford losing three months of revenue, are just caught in the cross fire.

People keep saying this. Is there much evidence to support it? It's very understandable that they don't want to forgo revenue, but that is not the same as being unable to continue operating with the lower revenue.

[jbigelow76]

How about you forgo getting paid for your work for three months to help your employer out? Will you die as a result, probably not, so we're all good right?

[maxerickson]

I think I wouldn't work for free.

I did say I understood why they do not want to do it, I'm still curious what the actual impact on their revenues would be (or can we not talk about that because the situation involves a bigger company that has lots of money?).

[FireBeyond]

The flip side is people are saying "Oh, but Apple will pay 1.5% more in royalties".

Oh, good. It'll only take 66 months to recoup that after a three month trial.

[guelo]

We know that Apple could most definitely continue operating with the very slightly lower profits of paying for the three months.

[maxerickson]

Which is completely orthogonal to my question about whether the characterization being made about the impact on indies is correct or not.