Marcus Anthony

I wanted to know that by signing up for Apple Music, as a customer, I am of real value to the artists who give their best work to the service because in my reality, I have had no problem purchasing songs on iTunes. It feels better in my heart when currency values a product – it merits producers of a product to give us more.

That’s not how Apple Music was originally going to operate though.

Originally, Apple was not going to pay royalties to any artists bounded to Apple Music during the company’s three-month free trial period for all new subscribers, after which subscribers pay $9.99 per month. For independent artists, this dictated choice pushed upon them meant they were going to put food on Apple’s tables rather than their own.

Taylor Swift took exception to that.

“I’m not sure you know that Apple Music will not be paying writers, producers, or artists for those three months,” Swift said in regards to Apple’s three-month free trial period. “I find it to be shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company.”

“This is not about me,” though she insisted. “This is about the new artist or band that has just released their first single and will not be paid for its success.”

“This is about the young songwriter who just got his or her first cut and thought that the royalties from that would get them out of debt. This is about the producer who works tirelessly to innovate and create, just like the innovators and creators at Apple are pioneering in their field…but will not get paid for a quarter of a year’s worth of plays on his or her songs.”

As I read Swift’s Tumblr post, I felt like her words echoed my thoughts. I wanted to jump onboard with Apple Music at the onset, but not when it was going to destroy livelihoods. If we destroy artists, we destroy quality music in the future.

Like with Spotify, Rdio, Google Play Music, and a slew of other music streaming services, Swift explained that she would be withholding her latest album, 1989, from appearing on Apple’s new streaming service. That sentiment wasn’t cemented though when said with “love, reverence, and admiration for everything else Apple has done,” that she hopes she can soon join "the progression towards a streaming model that seems fair” for the collective music community worldwide that depends on digital income.

“I think this could be the platform that gets it right,” Swift proclaimed.

Her post measured the power of the Taylor Swift celebrity brand because it was not even 24 hours later when Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services, publicly responded via Twitter and announced a major change in the way Apple Music will conduct business.

It was the news everyone wanted to hear, including Taylor Swift.

For me, it solidified my decision to leave Google Play Music upon my impending subscription with Apple Music on June 30, 2015.

According to a new report from The New York Times, Apple will now pay record labels 0.2 cents for each song streamed during the three-month free trial of Apple Music. In addition, record labels will reportedly get an additional 0.047 cents per stream for song rights.

Now when I will be listening to John Lennon and George Harrison on Apple Music, I will feel like I am constantly supporting their estates and everyone involved with their Beatlemania legacies.

When I listen to Omer Bhatti on Apple Music, I will now feel like I am always supporting an artist who is cutting his teeth in Norway, trying to make it big on his own merits when he could do it bigger in America.

With the global reach of Apple Music and its reocurring base of royalty payouts, rather than a one-time iTunes purchase, artists from all corners of the globe may not have to relocate to “make it big” anymore.

Apple Music is the spotlight artists around the world have been waiting for.

"As a kid growing up, I always wondered if my city (Toronto) or even my country (Canada) would have somebody break into the global scene as a true superstar," Drake said at Apple WWDC 2015. "The dream of being an artist like myself and connecting directly with an audience has never been more close and reachable than right now."

We’re living in an interconnected world and now with Apple Music, not only through its curated music streaming service, but also through its packaged features like Discover, Connect, and Beats 1 Radio, we will begin to see a new rising effect for independent artists worldwide.

Apple Music is for me because it supports music the right way.

Thank you Taylor Swift and thank you Apple for listening to her voice that echoed everyone else.

While I wish I could be compressing a video I’m currently editing in Final Cut Pro X for The Pinnacle List, the fact of the matter is that I spend most of my time waiting for clips to transcode and for my overall project to render so I can playback what I’ve produced thus far.

My background tasks right now are going to take about 30-45 minutes to complete, by my best guess. Sometimes it can take an hour. Ridiculous, right?

It’s especially sad when you consider that all I want is for some clips to be stabilized and that I’m working with the latest FCPX version on the best iMac. You can see the specs for yourself...

Instead of playing NHL 15 online against fellow night owls on Xbox One though, I felt compelled to write this short piece about my FCPX editing experience. That’s one of the reasons why I love that I joined Tumblr. I suddenly have an unapologetic voice.

There’s a lot I love about FCPX, such as its remarkably intuitive interface that takes inspiration from iMovie on iOS with an advanced approach for Mac, but lag is a killer. For all the time I have to wait for background tasks to complete, my curious mind often brings up Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

I may just have to crack open that app for my next video project.

If you’re using Final Cut Pro X as your editing software for video production, I would like to hear about your experiences, good or bad. Leave a comment below and also tell me if you have used Adobe Premiere Pro CC.

That’s all for this one!

Ciao for now, Marcus 

I’m including photos into this post by using the Text post type on my iMac in Chrome. In the screenshot below, you’ll see options below the title (yes, a title) that includes a camera for uploading photos amongst your text.

Those icon options are accessible by a “+” toggle that appears to the left of the text area canvas whenever you hover your cursor over the placeholder of your current line of text.

That right there is good UI. I can’t complain about that, but the UX is still a little confusing when there’s a Photo post type to upload pictures without even being given an optional placeholder to include a title. That spells death for SEO.

I know better than to fall into that death trap though. Not going to happen, but that means the Tumblr iPhone app is useless to me now. In the Text post type, there is no “+” toggle to include photos.

The only way to include images within a Text post in Tumblr for iPhone is to write it in HTML yourself with an <a> tag. Give me a break!

For documentation’s sake, here is what the Photo post type screen looks like in the iPhone app for Tumblr. In the screenshot below, Instagram lovers will feel right at home with this UI.

After selecting the photo or group of photos that you want to post, start writing a caption to include with the photo. Don’t forget though that this caption is optional, and oh yeah, Tumblr doesn’t think you need a title – so forget about that, along with your SEO too.

I joined Tumblr to express myself beyond 140 characters on Twitter and to articulate myself beyond what people are willing to read on Facebook. I’m not saying I’m leaving this network, because I’m not, but for the UI/UX designers at Tumblr by way of Yahoo, there are some necessary upgrades that need to be made if you want to help flourish your community to even greater heights.

I get that you don’t care about Google Search rankings (at least you’re pretending to not care), but until Yahoo Search becomes number one (not anytime soon, but good job on the Mozilla deal), you’ll have to care about Google’s search algorithms.

Call me crazy, but that means we need titles for the Photo post type and the ability to include photos into Text posts on iPhone.

Wait...

Would I be crazier if I just said merge the Text and Photo post types?

That would solve all these problems!

Now I know what you’re saying; there are other streaming services that I could use right now like Spotify, Rdio, Google Play Music, and so forth. I’ve been a subscriber at one point or another for all of those services. In fact I’m a current subscriber of Google’s music streaming service.

I added Bhatti’s new song Let Me Know to my Google Play Music Library, but there’s always been something about a music streaming service that just hasn’t felt right to me. I love music, it’s an everyday affair for me, but just being able to add an endless amount of songs to my library at no cost-per-item has always felt devaluing for me. I know I’m in the minority with that mentality, but I’m okay with that.

Perhaps my adulation for the late Steve Jobs has something to do with it. I supported his contemptuous stance on shunning subscription services because I didn’t want to see the music industry go through another turbulent time like it did during the days of when any computer geek could illegally download music on Napster, Kazaa, and LimeWire for no cost.

That’s exactly why Taylor Swift pulled her entire music catalog from every streaming service in November 2014, namely Spotify for its totally free ad-supported service that has hurt the bottom line of the music industry.

So without much hesitation, I just went for it. I purchased Let Me Know by Omer Bhatti, who famously lived parts of his childhood with the late “King of Pop” Michael Jackson.

The purchase felt good. It felt like the right thing to do. I want to see more music released by Bhatti, but most importantly, I want to hear more quality music by the Norwegian artist, who also goes by his stage name, O-Bee. This is the classic case of quality, not quantity. A good economy for the music industry is what inspires artists like Bhatti to continue producing great music.

So where do I go from here?

Well, this song could very well be the last song I purchase on iTunes. That is not hypocritical by any means because tomorrow during Apple’s event, I will have listening ears during the Apple Music announcement. I want to know what the value of such a service will be for artists worldwide.

Rumours have it that Apple Music won’t have a free ad-supported service like Spotify, but rather a free trial period that will last three months. To me, that sounds fair, because in connection with your Apple ID, there would be no getting around that trial period any longer than it lasts – so it would then be time to pay for your “ad-free” subscription fee, à la Netflix.

I have also heard that Apple Music will be paying out the most lucrative royalty payouts to record labels – as high as 60% of subscription fees – but how that is measured; I don’t know. My guess would be to compare a music streaming service to TV ratings, where the more viewership you get, the more valuable your program is for network companies. So that means more than ever, an artist’s social media reach would have an even more direct correlation to how successful they are. The more followers gained would equal a greater potential for higher listenership on Apple Music through promotional posts and tweets, just like I was captured into Bhatti’s tweet about his new single on YouTube.

It’ll be an interesting time tomorrow at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where I may finally evolve with the times and fully embrace the service of music streaming. Or it could totally pass me by, being that I live in Canada and I almost certainly expect that Apple Music will not be readily available for us Canucks. Whatever the case may be though, when I finally have access to Apple Music, as long as I feel valued in the sense of being able to support artists through such a service by listening to their music, I will be on board – 100%.

My analogy of correlating TV ratings with what would be music plays on Apple Music makes the most sense to me. Couple that with the integrated service within Apple’s entire ecosystem (which I am tightly tied to) and it could all come to be a very pleasurable experience.

Thank you for reading!