Apple’s $100M+ Payout to Music Giants for iCloud Launch
Apple will shovel out between $100 million and $150 million for advance payments to the four music label giants to secure it’s upcoming iCloud launch. According to the New York Post, Apple has agreed to pay each music label between $25 million to $50 million for their services. The music labels will then share the cost with Apple; 30% will go to Apple, 12% will go to the music publishers, and the remaining will be left to the labels to pay out their artists.
The enormous advance payments are what allegedly has been the source of Google’s inability to get their own cloud services up and running. Now that Apple has set the premium, Google will likely have to pay even higher advances to secure the same music labels.
As we reported earlier, Steve Jobs is expected to unveil Apple’s iCloud on Monday, June 6th at WWDC. The iCloud services will be free to iTunes customers, but could face an annual $25.00 fee in the future.
I’m very interested in this developing story, I’m glad you wrote a follow up article. It will be interesting to see how Google responds to the large amount of money Apple is paying out to get iCloud up and running.