It is thought that Apple will wheel out Steve Jobs – who will take to the stage against doctor’s orders – to launch the company’s new music offering, iCloud, at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco later today. Fully licensed by all four major record companies and publishers – but with all but the smallest indies not on board – this will be Apple’s big play in the digital content storage space.
Billboard cited sources this weekend confirming that the split of revenues generated by the iCloud service will be 58% to the labels, 12% to the publishers and 30% to Apple. As previously reported, at least one of the major record companies wanted their share to be 60%, but seemingly gave way in order to allow Apple to offer the big publishers the cut they were seeking. The US trade mag says that indie publishers are being offered the same as their major counterparts, but indie labels less than the big four record companies, which explains the delays on that front.
It seems almost certain that Apple’s digital locker service will have limitations compared to those launched by Amazon and Google, who decided to go without licenses, and therefore don’t have any content owners to placate. That said, Apple could more than compensate for any licence-created limitations simply by out-performing their rivals on user experience.
According to the New York Post, it wasn’t just functionality limitations, nor Apple’s dominance in the digital music market, that assured the IT giant major label support for their digital locker. The Post reckons each of the majors will get a $30-50 million advance for their involvement in the iCloud.
How Apple plans to actually divvy up the 58% and 12% of revenues going to the labels and publishers respectively (ie between companies), and how the majors will then share their share with their artists, well, that’s where these sorts of deals become especially interesting, and are often most shrouded in secrecy.
Sections: Digital - Top Stories | Tags: Apple, iCloud, Steve Jobs
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