The power that the labels have is very strong. It's hardly scary to know that they hold all the cards - why do you think the rise of indie labels has been greeted with such enthusiasm by artists.

In this case, what Apple did was exchange a longer free period for higher per-song royalties after the free period ends, but it does this on a per-label basis and clearly hammers out these sorts of deals with the biggest ones first. The smaller labels and indies can negotiate different deals if they like, but do you think they'll be able to do better than Sony, for example, will be able to manage (making the assumption that Sony will press Apple for the best deal that is good for Sony)? They can't deal directly with the artists even if they want to because the rights to the music aren't owned by the artists themselves.

The fact that the music labels hold all the cards is separate issue - artists have been getting the short end of the stick since long before Apple was even allowed to compete in the music business by law (hello Apple Records vs Apple Inc lawsuit).

Err, no.

You don't seem to understand how music rights work - Taylor Swift's record label is the one who made the deal with Apple for the artists it represents. What she choses to flap about is irrelevant. She made the same fuss with Spotify.

If she has a problem with the deal that her label made, then she can argue with them, not with Apple. She has the power to tell her label to "make the stand" but she doesn't negotiate directly with Apple or Spotify or Pandora at any stage.

They aren't "getting away with it" - they negotiated with the labels who own the music. Both parties agreed to the terms.

3 months free trial (instead of 1 like with Pandora or Spotify) in exchange for higher per-track royalties after the trial ends (compared to Pandora and Spotify).

I'm amazed how many people seem to this this was just some ultimatum by Apple. I mean, the trolly-click-baity headlines like to paint it as such, so I can see maybe how that idea might spread, but you think people would be able to smell click bait.

Apple negotiated with the music labels that own the rights to the music.

In exchange for 3 months free trial they pay more per track in royalties after the free trial than Pandora or Spotify.

They clearly negotiated with the largest labels first and then offered the same terms to smaller labels and indies, who were totally free to either negotiate a different deal or decide not to participate in Apple Music (which doesn't affect their deals regarding the iTunes Store, which is handled separately).

You think the way this has been painted that Apple went around with heavies and physically beat the artists to make them agree.

You won't because they agreed a set of terms with the rights holders for how the music service would be launched?

What an odd decision.

I mean, whatever floats your boat I guess.

I assume you have the same set of criteria for Spotify and Pandora, or is that different because they only negotiated for 1 month free trial (and pay a lower percentage of royalties after that 1 month ends compared to Apple)?

I'm curious.

Well, they negotiated for the three month trial in exchange for increased royalties for the rights holders after that time is up - the people who own the music agreed to these terms, so Swift's rant is misdirected (and also conveniently ignores that she made the same rant against Pandora and Spotify, but this is an Apple bash piece, so leaving that out makes it look like it's specifically an Apple issue).

Apple didn't do this in a vacuum, and they certainly didn't lay it out as an ultimatum. These discussions have been ongoing for months.

So you don't think that Apple spent months (likely years) negotiating the deal for this? They specifically set up the 3 month trial period followed by an *increased* share of the revenue for the rights holders (i.e., more than Pandora and Spotify are paying per track). All of this is set out in pages and pages of contracts.

Where's the "head explode with incomprehension of extreme stupidity" meme when you need it?

No wonder you forgot to log in. I'd be embarrassed too. How do you even tie your shoes?

Counting Crows sell the recordings taken off their sound board for most of the gigs they perform on an independent website. It's pretty reasonable too.

Their studio albums are available via the usual route, but it's a great way to hear their live material (which is almost always chaining around between performances).

No problem. There was a lot of mixed information about how the free Windows keys would work due to a lack of info from MS themselves when they announced it, whether it would be one year only, and whether you'd be able to do a clean install or just an upgrade only etc.

Microsoft has clarified that it's a full Windows key that can be used for clean installs and that once you have it, it's the same as buying a copy of Windows today.

It would look like that if it had anything to do with sales. As usual for slashdot, the summary and headline aren't actual facts.

This change affects books in the lending library system. Anything on the ebook store is not affected by this change and is paid out the same way it always was.

This change just affects the lending system and is designed to eliminate exactly the problem you are describing - authors intentionally breaking up books into chapters and listing them as 15 separate books instead of one book because it meant they got 15x more of the subscription pool money for the KU lending library. Amazon is just changing how the money is split up in that system only to try and discourage that behaviour.

The summary is woefully inaccurate as usual. This change only affects titles in KU that are borrowed, and even then only applies to the way that the money already allocated for paying authors in that pool is split up. It used to be per book, and was being abused by submissions of very short titles with no value that were being artificially "read" to increase the payout value. Amazon is switching the model so that actual books are more likely to take the lion's share of the money allocated for that service.

Titles that are purchased as ebooks through Amazon's store are unaffected by this change.

I'd have to wonder why you'd subscribe to an ebook lending service if you weren't going to read any of the books, but you could try arguing this with them I suppose.

(Obviously this doesn't apply to ebooks that amazon actually sells, but who needs facts in a slashdot headline or summary).

You understand incorrectly.

Once you have a Windows 10 key, its yours.

To make it more obvious, the price for the foist year will be $0.00, and if you "buy" it during this time for the low, low price of $0.00 then you get a key that doesn't expire.

If you buy it after that year the price will be more than $0.00 (let's say $x, where x is not zero) and you will get a key that doesn't expire.

What will almost certainly happen though is that the period where it is available for free will be extended indefinitely. It's clear they want to push adoption of the Windows ecosystem to make it more homogenous and the best way to do that rapidly is to make it look like the window for the free upgrade is limited. I suspect it will be free forevermore, but they want a rapid uptake of users rather than a slow trickle.

How many reference books and textbooks are by self published authors and are part of the subscription-based lending library for ebooks?

Oh, you thought this applied to all ebooks amazon sells?!

Well, I guess the click bait headline does sort of suggest this, but no, as usual the summary is woefully bereft of proper facts.

All very well, but it comes off as baseless Apple bashing - you admit yourself that you don't know anything about it. The Airport Extreme is controlled by an application and always has been, and the system requirements are listed on the box. Your original comment posited an impossible situation - I can't think of any combination of Apple laptop hardware and AE hardware that would result in incompatibility if the time is restricted to 4 years.

Sure the choice of using an app to control the AE is an unusual one, but it works on Windows, OS X and iOS and it works on pretty much everything.

My thought is that you have fudged the numbers a little to make it sound worse than it is. The 6th Gen Extreme (that requires Lion to set up on OS X) was released in 2013 and the last Mac laptop that can't run that was released in early 2006 which is 7 years, since it came out in June 2013.

If it's any AE earlier than the 6th gen then the software will run on any Mac released in the last 13 years (going back to the PowerPC G4 era).

If you're going to tell tall tales, you might not want to tell them about things that (you personally have admitted) you know nothing about.

But what am I saying? I'm interrupting an anti-Apple circle jerk. My apologies, carry on.