There has been a push for an Apple based radio station for many months. It should’ve been on the air?by now. But now, Apple is re-starting talks with record companies for proper licensing. If successful, they can reveal their radio plans next week.
The beef has been with music publishers and record companies who push for higher royalties and other payments. Despite these disagreements, Apple seems very optimistic to unveil iRadio at a San Francisco conference mid-June. They have a reason to be optimistic. Apple has signed deals with Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and is in talks with Sony Music Group. There’s still work to be done, but a lot of progress has been made.
Apple radio is expected to be free for the consumer and paid for solely by advertisers. But that’s not the only issue. Look at what iRadio’s competition would be: Pandora is one of them. They have 70 million users, hardly any of them are paying customers. Spotify and Clear Channel Communications, now well established, are also tough competitors. But some publishers see at least financial gain from iRadio. While Pandora pays four percent of revenue to song publishers, they want Apple to pay?10 percent of their revenue.
I’m starting to smell a rat here. They expect iRadio to pay more than twice as much in publishing rights as their competitors do? No wonder why talks have been so slow. No wonder why Apple is negotiating with some musicians over the proper rights. Yes, I know Apple?is a multi-billion dollar company that can afford?to shell out that dough, but by this point, so can Pandora. If this iRadio?deal is going to?go far, they need to make it somewhat equal. If one company is being charged four percent revenue, don’t ask Apple?to pay?anymore than say, five or six percent. Let’s keep the game fair. If iRadio came out today, would you switch?