Apple Music Offers Artists Payment During Free Trial Period, Indie Labels and Music Groups Have Signed Up
Apple Music recently announced that it would pay artists during its three-month free trials. This has led to indie labels and music groups also opting to sign up. The critics had already predicted that these developments would soon follow.
Martin Mills, the chairman and founder of Beggars Group, in responding to this development, recently said, “Over the last few days we have had increasingly fruitful discussions with Apple. We are now delighted to say that we are happy to endorse the deal with Apple Music as it now stands, and look forward to being a big part of a very exciting future.”
This comes as a surprise as this group has been against streaming music. They feature artists like Radiohead, FKA Twigs, Arcade Fire, Adele and Jack White. In fact, it was only last week that they announced that Apple Music did not reach a deal with them.
Merlin, another global music rights agency, represents 20,000 labels and distributors has also signed a deal with Apple. Apple Music will offer its music just in time for its launch on June 30, 2015.
Apart from this, Tommy Silverman of Tommy Boy, expressed his pleasure at “Apple’s concern for the issues of the artist and independent label creative community”. It represents artists such as Naughty by Nature, Ghostface Killah and Gucci Mane.
A letter from Charles Caldas, the Merlin CEO, sums it up nicely as he says the company is happy the deal since Apple decided to pay artists during the free trial period.