In the latest report of corporate scandal, Apple has apparently been in talks with major labels in order to get them to remove their music from free streaming services like Spotify, and even YouTube.
Spotify currently has 60 million users. Of those, only 15 million pay for a monthly subscription. In the eyes of Apple, that’s a lot of lost revenue.
Sources for The Verge “also indicated that Apple offered to pay YouTube’s music licensing fee to Universal Music Group if the label stopped allowing its songs on YouTube.” This is not just some half-baked attempt to simply bump up their numbers. This is a full assault on the current model of music distribution and consumption.