Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians During Free Trial

Re:Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians... by snowwrestler on Monday June 22, 2015 @01:12PM (#9759701)

Planned is probably too strong a word, but I think it's likely that Apple anticipated that there might be pushback on the trial period, so they ready to make a quick change.

Remember when the iPhone debuted at $600 and no subsidy? People said it would never sell at that price. But of course a few did, and then Apple quickly cut the price to $400. Eventually it became $200+subsidy, just like any other smartphone.

Apple seems to start out with their preferred offer and see if it works. If not, they go to the next fallback position. That happens so quickly that it seems clear that they must anticipate it somewhat.

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Re:Apple Says “We Hear You Taylor Swift”, Will Pay Musicians... by cracell on Monday June 22, 2015 @01:27PM (#9759812)

The scenario you give with the iPhone may have been planned marketing as well. It's not that hard to conclude that a $600 dollar cell phone would not sell very well when the iPhone debuted. But releasing it at that price made it "exclusive", creating a lot of consumer desire for the device, then they dropped the price to where people could afford it. So they cashed in on that seed they planted and received a lot of additional news coverage from the price drop.

Apple has teams of people working through this stuff. So while you may be right that it was just a prepared backup plan, it also could've been the plan to begin with.

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