Apple Music keeps improving, but will its video catch YouTube? (1 Viewer)

[Ted Todorov]

One of the reasons I chose Apple Music over Spotify is Apple Music’s support for music videos. Indeed the music video selection, especially for older ones has been continually improving, heading towards a lot of stuff from the dawn of the MTV era (“I want my MTV!” - early 1980s) For instance Duran Duran just got a pile of music videos added to their selection, a while ago David Bowie and Prince got tons of them, etc.

While all this is a huge win for me, there is still a vast gap between Apple Music and YouTube. Now, the down side on YouTube is that quality is often wildly inconsistent and there are commercials. But absolutely everything is there, be it video or audio only. Meanwhile Apple Music is missing one or both. Take Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - their first couple of albums “Bad Reputation” and “I Love Rock’n’Roll” a missing from Apple Music - the whole albums, not just the videos. At least they are available on the iTunes Store. Others like Rainer Maria “Catastrophe Keeps Us Together” are not on Apple Music or the iTunes Store - but all of it video and audio are on YouTube. I am sure that there are hundreds if not thousands of other such examples.

I don’t doubt that some if not most/all are in some legal conflict limbo - think of it as the music equivalent of the Batman TV show fight that kept it off DVDs for over a decade while the two studios were wrestling. The question though is how does YouTube get away with it? My guess is that Google simply publishes anything until they get sued and lose in court. Apple doesn’t publish unless they have permission ahead of time. Should we be urging Apple to start behaving like Google? Or at least take a much more active approach in getting rights? Amazon also happily sells the OOP CDs.

 

[Ted Todorov]

Latest improvement -- Music Videos are getting their official section, which is another motive for a more thorough music video library:

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/03/29/apple-adds-new-music-video-section-apple-music/

 

[Ted Todorov]

Biggest setback - pulling large bunches of previously available music videos. First all the 80s Pat Benatar Music videos disappeared, then all of older Sheryl Crow ones just did. In both cases I actually have them on old DVDs, but I have no desire to pull a DVD off the shelf, put in the player, go through a bunch of menus just to play a particular video s I could via Apple Music.

No idea what goes on with the legal/business issues behind this - I understand the certain videos not being on Apple Music to start with, but once they are there, I've actually bothered to add them to my library and download them to my iPad having them vanish is very frustrating. Discovering that they have vanished while trying to watch them while in Airplane Mode (on an actual flight) is extra frustrating.

 

[Thomas Newton]

The question though is how does YouTube get away with it? My guess is that Google simply publishes anything until they get sued and lose in court. Apple doesn’t publish unless they have permission ahead of time. Should we be urging Apple to start behaving like Google? Or at least take a much more active approach in getting rights? Amazon also happily sells the OOP CDs.

YouTube is a service where just about anyone can post videos. Google is not supplying most of the content, so U.S. law does not require Google to engage in prior policing. If someone posts an infringing video, the copyright holder can file a DMCA take-down notice. (I believe that Google also has a program where videos can be subjected to forced advertising, with the "poster's" take being given to the copyright holder, whether the poster likes it or not. Once that happens, the copyright holder might not mind having the unauthorized video there, generating money for them whenever someone views it.)

In the case of Apple Music, Apple is a commercial music distributor, not merely the operator of a neutral video distribution service. So it's a different situation.

It is a long-established legal principle that control of a copyright does not confer an infinite right to control particular copies after the sale. So Amazon and Amazon Marketplace vendors have every right to sell OOP CDs. (I assume that we are talking about original copies, and not counterfeits or bootlegs.)

 

[Thomas Newton]

No idea what goes on with the legal/business issues behind this - I understand the certain videos not being on Apple Music to start with, but once they are there, I've actually bothered to add them to my library and download them to my iPad having them vanish is very frustrating. Discovering that they have vanished while trying to watch them while in Airplane Mode (on an actual flight) is extra frustrating.

I remember when something like this happened to an e-book. The publisher of the e-book did not have the rights to sell it here. The way that courts would normally handle this in the "real world" is to ban future infringing sales and to punish the infringing publisher. They would not yank existing copies of the book from the homes of good-faith buyers.

The e-book seller decided to do just that – yanking it not just from "the cloud", but from e-readers of customers that had already downloaded it.

The name of the book? 1984

 

[Ted Todorov]

It is a long-established legal principle that control of a copyright does not confer an infinite right to control particular copies after the sale. So Amazon and Amazon Marketplace vendors have every right to sell OOP CDs. (I assume that we are talking about original copies, and not counterfeits or bootlegs.)

One has to assume anything at Apple Music is coming directly from the record company. I doubt that something for a major artist like Sheryl Crow is up on Apple Music for two years by mistake.
Also the audio-album versions of the songs aren’t disappearing, just the Music Videos.
But I’d love to know more about how Music Videos on Apple Music work from a business perspective - very little seems to be written about it by the press

 

[Sam Posten]

YouTube: convenience and piracy trumps quality

 

[DaveF]

I didn't even know that Apple does music videos. How does that work? What app or devices can show them?

 

[Thomas Newton]

I didn't even know that Apple does music videos. How does that work? What app or devices can show them?

You purchase them from the iTunes Store, or subscribe to Apple Music, and get access to them along with access to audio-only files.

The purchased ones play on Apple devices – or, perhaps, on the Windows version of iTunes. While the videos are in MPEG-4 format, the files have Apple-specific DRM that would prevent you from using other third-party players. Downloaded (cached) Apple Music videos presumably have similar DRM, to ensure that the files turn into pumpkins if you stop subscribing.

 

[TonyD]

Amazon just today added HD and Ultra HD to many songs
I guess it’s essentially hi-rez audio.