French Indie Music Industry UPFI Joins Apple Music Protest

Although Apple has a history of innovation and has had a good track record of working with many partners successfully, requiring music producers to assume the financing of the launch of their streaming service is proving only to be in their best interest at this point.  This may impose signficant economic difficulties for indie music publishers. After all, independent shouldn’t be the ones paying for Apple’s customer acquisition and the risk of their artists.

French indie music trade group UPFI is a professional organization representing the majority of music distributors and producers of independent phonograms. This trade group has now joined their US, UK and French counterparts in denouncing Apple’s 3 month free trial that pays no royalties at all to artists.  UPFI wrote in an open letter to Apple that Apple may cause a loss of income which may be considerable for all labels whose activity is based on the release of new products.

Hopefully Apple Music will rethink its contract terms as many indpendents are ready to discuss creating a mutually beneficial service with fair terms for all parties involved.