Apple Music threatens to pull indie acts’ music from iTunes

Singer Anton Newcombe has slammed Apple Music’s controversial decision not to pay independent artists during the three-month trial of its service.

Via a series of Twitter statements, the Brian Jonestown frontman claimed that Apple threatened to withdraw his band’s music from iTunes, should he refuse to comply with the non-royalty policy.

“It’s not ok for these fucking idiots to decide art has no value,” wrote Newcombe, before referring to Apple as a “satanic corporation.”

Read Newcombe’s tweets below:

Yesterday, Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon also spoke critically of Apple via Twitter, telling his followers that the company was no longer as innovative as before.

Beggars Group has been the latest international indie group to speak out against Apple Music’s policy. In a statement released today, the British record label expressed its concern for the economic fate of its own upcoming artist releases, as well as over the potentially exploitative nature of the ‘freemium’ model.

“[…] Given the natural response of competing digital services to offer comparable terms, we fear that the free trial aspect, far from moving the industry away from freemium services – a model we support – is only resulting in taking the “mium” out of freemium,” the statement reads.

The company, who owns the labels 4AD, Matador, XL, Rough Trade and Young Turks, also revealed that they have yet to sign an agreement with Apple.

“Whilst we understand the logic of their proposal and their aim to introduce a subscription-only service, we struggle to see why rights owners and artists should bear this aspect of Apple’s customer acquisition costs.”

Yesterday, The Australian Independent Record Labels Associations (AIR) also released a statement, saying that it did not endorse the deal handed to indies from Apple Music.

“As a whole the independent sector is a powerful voice in the music industry but its individual parts, the smaller labels particularly, cannot withstand such a potentially catastrophic drop in revenue,” the statement reads.

“[..] It is AIR’s view therefore that, in its present form, this agreement sadly does not meet a standard of commercial fairness that we can endorse.”