Eminem Provides First Beats 1 Guest Interview With DJ Zane Lowe [iOS Blog]

Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe has teased an image on Instagram that confirms hip-hop artist and rapper Eminem will be the first guest interviewed on the global radio station, which launches as part of Apple Music next week. Eminem’s appearance is largely unsurprising given that he has a close relationship with Beats co-founder Dr. Dre and is signed to his record label Aftermath Entertainment.

Lowe interviewed several high-profile artists and individuals when he was a BBC Radio 1 DJ, including Chris Martin, Eminem, Kanye West, Jay Z and Rick Rubin, and those guest appearances could be a major drawing point towards Apple Music. The streaming music service will also lure subscribers with a free three-month trial period and exclusive content such as Pharrell’s new single Freedom.

Apple and indie publishers are still ironing out Music deals

Apple recently gave in to indie labels’ demands for proper compensation during its three-month Music trial, thanks in part to Taylor “Catastrophe” Swift. Now, Billboard and The New York Times have revealed some pertinent details about the deal: Apple has apparently promised to pay royalties worth $0.002 or 0.2 cents for each song streamed during the free trial period, which is on par with Spotify’s free tier rate. Music publishers (songwriters and composers) will also get a tiny piece of the pie, which could be around $0.00047 per stream. Those rates apply to all labels, but it’s a bigger victory for indies, which reportedly didn’t even get a copy of Apple Music’s terms until the day it was announced — major labels had been in talks with Cupertino way before that date. That said, the two factions’ negotiations aren’t over yet.

It turns out indie publishers, in particular, aren’t too happy with a few aspects of the deal, including a condition that gives Apple a 50 percent discount for two years if its Music service is bundled with a carrier plan. They’re also worried about possible logistics and accounting issues, since the company plans to pay labels and publishers directly instead of sending the money through performance rights organizations. Despite these remaining issues, Billboard says Apple is a lot more responsive to indie musicians now and is already working on a fix.

Filed under: Misc, Apple

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Source: The New York Times, Billboard

Apple Paying 0.2 Cents for Each Song Streamed Free During Apple Music Trial Period

Apple will pay record labels 0.2 cents for each song that customers stream for free during the three-month Apple Music free trial, reports The New York Times. The rate is similar to what Spotify pays out for songs accessed through its free streaming tier and does not include a smaller payment made to music publishers for songwriting rights.

Apple is still working to complete deals with publishers, but a second report from Billboard suggests the company may pay out an additional 0.047 cents per stream for song rights, for a total payment of approximately 0.247 cents for each song an Apple Music user listens to.

Though Apple did not initially plan to pay labels and publishers during the three month free trial it’s providing to customers, it reversed course after both a strongly worded letter from Taylor Swift and negotiation difficulties with independent labels who balked at the terms.

The money that Apple is paying per stream during the trial period is significantly less than what rights holders will receive after Apple Music has paying customers, but it appears to have satisfied many indie labels. As of this morning, Apple signed deals with both Beggars Group and Merlin Network, companies that represent more than 20,000 indie labels and distributors.

Apple Music will officially launch next Tuesday in over 100 countries. All customers will receive a free three month trial, after which time a subscription will be required to access the service. Subscription prices vary by country, but in the U.S., an Apple Music subscription costs $9.99 per month for an individual or $14.99 per month for a family of up to 6 users.

T-Mobile iPhone Users Seeing Frequent Random Restarts and Blue Screens

A growing number of T-Mobile iPhone users are complaining about seeing frequent restarts and “blue screens of death” on their devices, a problem that seems to have begun very recently. MacRumors has received several complaints from readers, and there are also numerous reports of problems on Twitter, Facebook, and reddit.

Affected users are experiencing a split second blue screen that’s followed by their devices restarting, and it appears most people who are seeing issues are T-Mobile customers that began having problems last night or this morning.

Known devices with problems include the iPhone 6 Plus, the iPhone 6, and the iPhone 5s, with restarts happening at 10 to 30 minute intervals. Multiple versions of iOS 8 appear to be affected, including iOS 8.1 and iOS 8.3.

Hey guys. So this morning my iPhone 6 (4 months old) started just randomly restarting itself every 20-30 minutes or so. I wasn’t even using it most of the time, it was in my pocket at work (could tell because of lock screen that indicated I needed to enter my pin after a restart as opposed to finger ID). At one point I was texting my SO about it, the screen turned blue for maybe 2 seconds and it restarted.

It is not clear if T-Mobile recently pushed a carrier update that’s causing the problem, but a reddit user who spoke with T-Mobile’s support staff said that he got the impression that T-Mobile believes a memory problem might be the cause of the restarts. “The sense I got from the technician is that a) they suspect memory problems, and b) they’re getting a lot of calls about it,” he wrote.

Some users have had success putting a stop to the restarts with a hard reset, and that’s the solution that T-Mobile is recommending to customers who call in. If that doesn’t work, T-Mobile is instructing customers to clear out their old text messages and do a factory restore via iTunes.

T-Mobile Simple Choice Plans Updated With 21 GB Soft Cap on Data Usage [iOS Blog]

T-Mobile recently edited the fine print on its 4G LTE Simple Choice plans to notify customers that there’s a 21 GB soft cap on data usage, reports TmoNews. Customers who exceed 21 GB of data usage during a billing period will see their data speeds throttled during periods of high network demand.

Unlimited 4G LTE customers who use more than 21 GB of data in a bill cycle will have their data usage de-prioritized compared to other customers for that bill cycle at locations and times when competing network demands occur, resulting in relatively slower speeds. See t-mobile.com/OpenInternet for details.

Prior to the explicit 21 GB soft cap, T-Mobile’s Simple Choice subscribers who used more data than 97 percent of other T-Mobile subscribers were seeing slower data speeds during times of network congestion. According to TmoNews, customers who exceed their data limits see considerably slower speeds in busy areas, sometimes lower than 1Mbps.

This change in fine print makes it clear exactly how much data you have to use in order to feel the pinch. Previously, the 97% marker was ambiguous at best. You have no idea how much data other customers are using, and so you will have no way of knowing if you’re in the top 3% of data users, or not. Now there’s a much clearer 21GB “soft” cap.

T-Mobile’s 21 GB soft cap is rather generous and is likely to affect only a small percentage of T-Mobile customers. Reduction in data speeds is only enacted when there’s network congestion, so affected customers will only see throttling during peak usage times.

Customers who use more than 21 GB of data in a billing cycle will be flagged as de-prioritized by T-Mobile and could experience slower speeds at certain times until a new monthly billing cycle begins.

App Store’s Emphasis on Chart Positioning Squeezing Out Developers and Media Publications

When the App Store launched in 2008, it provided an exciting new way for developers to distribute third-party apps and games on the iPhone. With the release of iPhone OS 2.0, developers were no longer constrained to web apps and could take advantage of the possibilities afforded through fully native apps. At the time, it was an exciting and opportunistic new chapter for iPhone users, developers and mobile gaming websites.

As the App Store continues to grow in size, however, the landscape has begun to change. While the App Store was once a relatively even playing field, with a balanced mix of indie developers, mid-size studios and large publishers, the storefront now suffers from increasing disparity, a problem that is suffocating for many developers, enthusiast media publications and the broader ecosystem.

Clash of Clans, Game of War and Candy Crush Saga are top grossing iPhone apps
The shift away from paid apps towards free apps monetized with in-app purchases or mobile ads has driven the popularity of addictive games such as Clash of Clans, Game of War, Candy Crush Saga and Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, and the deep-pocketed developers behind each title will go to extreme measures to ensure their continued success, even including unthinkably expensive Super Bowl ads.

Eli Hodapp, Editor-in-Chief at TouchArcade:

“iOS gaming has since been pushed to two extremes: The giant, multi-million dollar studios of the world, and supremely tiny indie developers hoping to catch lightning in a bottle with a surprise viral hit they built in their spare time. The mobile gaming megacorps are operating on a financial level that’s hard to even fully comprehend, quite literally advertising during the Super Bowl, while the one-man indie studios typically can’t even afford an artist to help them with a better app icon.”

The main issue is not that multi-million-dollar game studios are spending considerably more money than independent developers, but rather the underlying App Store methodology that creates the artificial race to the top in the first place: chart positioning. Ranking near the top of the charts is still almost a must in order to be discovered within a sea of nearly 1.5 million apps and counting… Read more

iOS 9 Policy Change Prevents Advertisers From Seeing Installed Apps on User Devices

Apple is planning to introduce some important new policy changes that will extend its user privacy protections, reports The Information (via Business Insider). With iOS 9, Apple will no longer allow advertisers to access app download data for ad targeting purposes, meaning companies will not be able to see all of the apps that are downloaded on a user’s device.

Currently, companies like Twitter and Facebook are able to see which apps you have downloaded on your iPhone or iPad, sometimes using that information to deliver targeted ads. In The Information‘s example, Facebook and Twitter might use your app data to see that you have a lot of games downloaded, offering up an ad for a game you don’t yet have installed.

Advertisers are misusing a communication API in iOS called “canopenURL” to get the app download data, something that will no longer be possible when iOS 9 is released in the fall.

When introducing iOS 9, Apple was careful to point out the lengths it went to in order to protect user privacy in new iOS 9 features. On stage, Craig Federighi repeated a statement that’s often come from Apple executives – we don’t want to know your personal information. New Siri and Search features are entirely anonymous, not associated with an Apple ID, use a randomized identifier, are not linked to other Apple services, and are not shared with third parties.

Apple also introduced a new VPN extension API and added Content Blockers for Safari Extensions on iOS, opening up a way for extensions to block cookies, images, ads, pop-ups, and more.

iOS 9 and the new privacy features will be available to the public in the fall.

Pharrell’s Single ‘Freedom’ Will Be Exclusive to Apple Music [iOS Blog]

Apple plans to attract users to sign up for Apple Music by offering a free three-month trial period, but another way it will attempt to lure subscribers is by offering exclusive content through the incoming streaming music service. In late April, it was reported that the company was in talks with multiple artists, including Florence and the Machine and Taylor Swift, about exclusive content deals.

Just a few months later, hip-hop artist Pharrell Williams appears to be one of the first artists to reach a deal with Apple. Pharrell recently tweeted a teaser video for his upcoming single “Freedom,” and the ending credits reveal that the song will be exclusive to Apple Music, which launches June 30 on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and PC for $9.99 per month after the free trial period.

Freedom. June 30th @AppleMusic
https://t.co/82MceAkbRe

— Pharrell Williams (@Pharrell) June 23, 2015

“Freedom” was also the soundtrack of the Apple Music ad “Worldwide,” featuring DJ Zane Lowe, that was shown at WWDC.

It remains unknown what Apple is offering artists in return for making their music available exclusively through Apple Music, as the terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but it likely involves additional payment beyond Apple Music’s standard 71.5% to 73% revenue sharing model. Apple already pays a few percentage points more than market leader Spotify and other competitors, which share approximately 70% of revenue with artists and music rights holders.

Apple Music wins indie label love and its first exclusive song

Pharrell Williams has announced that his upcoming song Freedom will be exclusive to Apple Music, the first of no doubt many such announcements to come. The news isn’t a huge a surprise, considering that the track was featured at Apple’s WWDC 2015 developers conference during the Apple Music launch. It’s still a coup for Cupterino, however, considering Pharrell’s “Happy” was the number one US single last year. Williams made the reveal via a short video teaser on his Facebook page, which noted that that the song would be arrive “only on Apple Music” on the service’s June 30th launch date.

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Apple got more good news as indie label umbrella group WIN agreed today to endorse Apple Music. In addition, two of the largest independent labels, Beggars Group and Merlin also struck agreements with the music service at the last minute, according to Billboard. All of this is quite a turnaround for Apple, which had a rough couple of weeks after it was criticized by none other than Taylor Swift for not paying artists during a three-month free-trial period.

Indie labels also said earlier they weren’t ready to sign on to Music because of the trial period and other outstanding contract issues. However, Apple eventually agreed to pay musicians both mainstream and independent during the service’s free trial period. Artists and indie labels are now tripping over each other to congratulate Apple, but many observers think that the now infamous Swift memo gave Apple a way to change its tune without losing face.

[Image credit: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP]

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Apple

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Source: WINS, Billboard, Pharrell Williams (Facebook)