Apple is accused of attempting to launch its new Spotify rival, Apple Music, in a way that would leave Britain’s independent record labels “completely screwed” and struggling to survive.
The Silicon Valley giant is demanding that record labels such as XL Recordings, the home of Adele, and Domino, the label behind the Arctic Monkeys, agree to a free three-month trial of Apple Music, during which they will receive no payment.
That the provider of a service decides to market it with a free trail is fine. But it should rather be the finances of that provider of that service carrying the costs of making it free, no?
What are you whinging about? No one if forcing the record labels to comply.
It tells you who’s adding the value in the music production and distribution business, these days.
Life is unfair. Get used to it.
I’m merely going on your comment Tim.
Free market! There are other options and one is don’t go with it. Those that go with Apple will sell vast numbers, but like Amazon, Apple uses its muscle.
The real cost to the labels is virtually nil. The catalogue is digital and there. It is invest (well really forego some income which you probably wouldn’t have anyway) in the service with your materials and enjoy the benefits of 50,000,000 subscribers who will sign up for free and 25,000,000 who will pay after the free period is up. As ever Apple hit the right marketing buttons.
I use Apple because it allows me to do my work hassle-free and without learning much about IT but I am not an Apple nutter. I am aware of the fact I am ‘locked in’ but the experience is so much better than my wife’s who for pro reasons is tied to Windows and permanently f*cked (if you see what I mean!)
Just jealous of their power in the market and that I didn’t buy shares back when.
Incidentally, if I had shares I would wait to see how this pans out and if it doesn’t fly, then sell. Get out while you are at the top and realise your gains. If it flies you are in for another 10 years of dominance.
And this different to how the UK supermarkets treat their suppliers in what respect? And the supermarkets are in a far more monopolistic position.
I’m reminded of being an auditor at a company who supplies frozen food to ‘Iceland’ supermarket… The Iceland adverts at the time exclaimed ‘Are we doing a deal or are we doing a deal?’, ‘No they ‘re fucking not ‘, said my client, ‘WE are’.
Dominant and powerful companies will exploit their positions. Decide for yourself whether that’s the market getting best value for the consumer, or abuse of position. But Apple music is a new service, and it’s an open and competitive market. Perhaps Apple are pre-exploiting the market dominance they will likely end up with. Perhaps the labels are just whining.
There’s a lot of bleating from the (bigger, mainly) indie labels about how the big tech firms are treating them… so where is that entrepreneurial indie spirit that spawned these labels in the first place? Their whole reason d’être is supposed to be to get their output to the consumer without the filter of Globalmageacorp Inc.
Dave,
“It tells you who’s adding the value in the music production and distribution business, these days.”
No, it tells you who Apple *thinks* is adding value. But it’s not Apple, it’s the artists and producers. The music distribution thing isn’t particularly profitable because there’s little to differentiate Google Play, iTunes and Amazon MP3. And that’s the same with apps and movies – Apple provide the App Store to make the iPhone more valuable, not to make money from apps.
And that’s the same with apps and movies – Apple provide the App Store to make the iPhone more valuable, not to make money from apps.
Quite. That was a genius move allowing third parties to make their own apps for use on the iPhone.
> That was a genius move allowing third parties to make their own apps for use on the iPhone.
And a move Steve Jobs had misgivings about.
As others have alluded to, it’s the labels that are losing here. Since the MP3 arrived, their ability to control distribution has been whittled away and the artists can more easily go direct to the consumers (whether they are established or new artists) to build and service their fan base. The push back to making the cash from live events and merchandise, rather than the music itself, is an interesting one.
The mobile companies are finding the same as their cash cows of voice and messaging transfer to data.
TTG,
> There’s a lot of bleating from the (bigger, mainly) indie labels about how the big tech firms are treating them… so where is that entrepreneurial indie spirit that spawned these labels in the first place? Their whole reason d’être is supposed to be to get their output to the consumer without the filter of Globalmageacorp Inc.
Not commenting on the Apple deal here. But the “bleating” about Youtube was in response to Google’s blatant and persistent abuse of copyright law. Google have them over a barrel: put an official copy of your song on Youtube in return for an insulting pittance, or don’t, in which case there’ll be loads of unofficial copies on there from which Google will still make money and you’ll get fuck all. Google claim piracy is an insoluble problem they can do nothing about, but of course it would be a piece of piss for them to disallow the use of titles such as “ADELE ROLLING IN THE DEEP OFFICIAL VERSION” by users who aren’t XL. They could trivially easily send users a message like, “That appears to the name of a song you don’t own. Please specify whether it is a cover version or a parody.” They choose not to. They claim that it is impossible. They spend a lot of money lobbying governments to persuade them that such a ludicrous claim is true.
So say XL use their entrepreneurial spirit to build a superb video and song delivery system. In a properly regulated market, users would go to Youtube, search for “adele rolling in the deep”, get a list of covers and parodies and nowt else, so go searching elsewhere instead, and find XL’s brilliant Youtube competitor and watch the video there. Here in the real world, they go to Youtube, search for “adele rolling in the deep”, get an illegal high-quality copy of the original with Google’s adverts on it, and watch that.
Until that aspect of the market is properly regulated, entrepreneurial spirit is no use whatsoever. And pointing that out is not bleating.
It is often hard to tell the difference between Google’s business plan and a protection racket. Apple aren’t as bad as Google, but they have that same contempt for artists that has become so prevalent in the IT industry that relies on them.
If the record labels, artists and Recording Industry Ass. of America hadn’t spent the last 10 years doing everything they could to fuck up digital music distribution and just got down to providing a download/streaming service *they* controlled, they wouldn’t be in this position.
Instead to trying to bury Napster, they could have just purchased it…
Steve Crook: “Instead to trying to bury Napster, they could have just purchased it…”
And much the same applies to the Movie and TV downloads ‘business’.
Instead of whining about ‘pirated’ copies defrauding the business of income, the programming originators should have set about establishing an on-line equivalent of the Performing Rights Society together with the ISPs collected small ‘royalties’ for each download with the ISPs passing on the charge via payments for the level of bandwidth exploited by the consumer.
Instead we have ISPs trying to give away their product for as little as possible whilst complaining about high traffic and stress on their systems. Hollywood moguls, meanwhile, attempt to turn the average consumer into a criminal.
The films and TV shows are there, if you know where to look, those consume them would, most likely, pay via a bandwidth charge, since it need only be pennies per download, to be completely legal.
“And a move Steve Jobs had misgivings about.”
Jobs told an audience with iPhone 1 that web apps were the answer (to some annoyance). It’s only when people started hacking their iPhones (which ain’t that tricky as it’s a soup of established open and Apple tech) that the App Store came along.
Steve,
> If the record labels, artists and Recording Industry Ass. of America hadn’t spent the last 10 years …
Your argument appears to be out of date. This started in 97. In 2007, you had a point. But they have definitely not spent the last 10 years trying to fuck up digital music.
And while I agree that the majors stupidly got themselves into a weak position, the likes of Apple and Google are actually being far nicer to the majors than to the indies. One of the things Adele objected to was that Google are offering far worse deals to indies than to majors.
S2
“Google claim piracy is an insoluble problem they can do nothing about, but of course it would be a piece of piss for them to disallow the use of titles such as “ADELE ROLLING IN THE DEEP OFFICIAL VERSION” by users who aren’t XL. ”
Never understood this. Moreover it is bound to be the case that 10% of tracks generate 99%+ of views. The economic effects could be drastically mitigated by just clamping down on the big name tracks by the big name acts. It should be trivial to automate.
And should also be trivial for rights owners, or a subcontractor, to find and flag pirate versions of their most important property, even if they can’t find every last minor release with an undistinctive name and a few thousand views. Yet there are totemic songs clearly pirated there with millions of views.
Then there is the TV and film content…
What gives? Are the rights owners not doing their own monitoring? In some cases are they already getting a cut from what was originally a pirate upload? Do they not monitor out of principle, on grounds it shouldn’t be their job at their expense, or are they just weirdly bad at it?
Ears,
Rights owners point out that it takes longer to flag a track and get it taken down that it does for new tracks to appear. Google have made the process deliberately cumbersome and time-consuming. They’ve also included stupid conditions, such as requiring you to prove that you are the rights owner when you object — which is absurd and has no legal basis. Rolling In The Deep is by Adele and owned by XL. Google know this. If you or I find an illegal copy on Youtube, we should be able to point that out to Google, and they should take it down once it’s been pointed out, because they know it’s illegal. But they won’t, because the person pointing it out to them isn’t the rights holder.
The root problem is that we need some IT-savvy people in government who won’t be so easily lied to by Google’s (and others’) lobbyists.
@S2
Yes, I would agree that there was/is a fair point being made re. the YouTube thing, but surely that’s just an extension of the standard piracy/free-content arguments. The Indies, like everyone else impacted, need to deal with the modern age and find ways to make people who value their content send money in their direction. YouTube being lax on piracy doesn’t cost them anything, it just prevents them monetising certain content. So what? Since when were indie labels all about making money from videos?
> YouTube being lax on piracy doesn’t cost them anything, it just prevents them monetising certain content.
That certain content being their product.
> Since when were indie labels all about making money from videos?
Which is it? They need to get with the modern age or they need to stick to the business plan they had in the 80s? Why shouldn’t they make money from videos if they want to and if they make the videos?
Besides, Youtube contains songs, not just videos.
I’d have more sympathy for the music industry if it hadn’t spent the X years preceding the digital revolution royally shafting both the artists and the consumer.
As it is they are just getting their comeuppance for charging me £15 for a CD in 1990 that cost pence to burn.
“That certain content being their product.”
Absolutely. I’m just making the point that this is not a traditional revenue stream for these guys. Of course they’d have been paid in the past by broadcast media.. but video’s traditionally act as promos for the artists and songs, with the money being made from record sales and live performances.
“Which is it? They need to get with the modern age or they need to stick to the business plan they had in the 80s?”
They should deal with the fact that the Internet has fundamentally changed the game and they need to offer their content in ways that people are willing to pay for. And Adele’s album sales would suggest that they know how to do this. People will share/pirate content and preventing that, if it’s possible at all, is a much bigger issue.. and they’re not trying to deal with that, they’re just shouting at Google in the same way that the major labels we shouting at the guys who made home tape recorders in the 80’s.
That’s not to deny that, with the technology we’re talking about these days, Google could do a lot more. But those who want to circumnavigate copyright will do so. That horse has bolted.
“Why shouldn’t they make money from videos if they want to and if they make the videos”
I think they probably should. But their customers disagree.
> But their customers disagree.
If their customers weren’t watching their videos with adverts attached to them, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
> they’re just shouting at Google in the same way that the major labels we shouting at the guys who made home tape recorders in the 80’s.
In that analogy, Google are not making tape recorders; they are taking illegal tapes other people have made and selling advertising space on them.
> with the technology we’re talking about these days, Google could do a lot more. But those who want to circumnavigate copyright will do so.
You put those two sentences together as if you’re talking about two different groups. But Google want to circumnavigate copyright. Well, really, they’d rather just ignore it. Their business plan is based around knowingly breaking copyright law, fobbing people off if they object, and only obeying it when forced into a corner.
But it is disingenuous here to talk about those who wish to avoid paying, because of course Youtube is free to users. It is funded by advertising. The question is who gets the advertising revenue. We’re not talking about people who refuse to pay for music; we’re talking about people who make money out of music that isn’t theirs. Which Google actively encourage.
Sorry, not just encourage: collude in.
Having just taken my teenage daughters to watch the execrable plastic Australian power pop foursome ‘5 Seconds of Summer’, and been royally skinned for the pleasure, and paying a tenner a month for Spotify subscriptions, and doubtless more for t-shirts, posters, downloads and so on, I can’t say I’m all that bothered if they (5SOS) get ripped off by Google.
It’s sauce for the fucking gander, or the goose, or something.
It’s not like if Google started playing the white man re YouTube they would drop the price of their gig tickets; they’d just get better (or more) cars. The music industry has always been a racket, in more ways than one.
That said, I don’t understand why record labels don’t take action for copyright infringement. It would not be hard, though it may take time, but it seems to be to be something of an open and shut case?
Why are XL not firing off legal letters if they care?
Squander Two is right. YouTube willingly and knowlingly host illegal videos and make a lot of money off the back of it by selling advertising, and this is screwing over musicians at all levels. The government has no interest in actually doing its job and forcing YouTube to stop this, or to pay royalties. The only exception is the German government which has banned YouTube in Germany precisely because of this issue.
BTW It would be trivially easy for Google to block these videos. Ever see any porn on Google? No, because they block most of it.
>I’d have more sympathy for the music industry if it hadn’t spent the X years preceding the digital revolution royally shafting both the artists and the consumer. As it is they are just getting their comeuppance for charging me £15 for a CD in 1990 that cost pence to burn
That was 25 years ago. Those execs have long since retired to Florida. The only rich people in the music industry now are people like Daniel Ek, the creator of Spotify, who is worth 190 million pounds. This is no longer an industry with much money. I don’t expect anyone to cry for the musicians and execs who chose those careers for themselves, and in a free market if they don’t make money then that’s their tough luck, but it does piss me off that Google/YouTube can get away with basically illegal activity and everyone outside the music industry just laughs because they get free content (before they complain bitterly about how rubbish music is these days).
Cal,
“BTW It would be trivially easy for Google to block these videos. Ever see any porn on Google? No, because they block most of it.”
It’s not “trivially easy”. It’s really difficult. The reason adult material isn’t on YouTube is that it gets reported by people. People don’t report copyrighted material much.
Stig,
> It’s not “trivially easy”. It’s really difficult.
Agreed, but who cares? Whether the law applies to you is not based on how awkward you find it to obey the law. If it’s too difficult for Google, oh, boo hoo, poor Google. I have to obey copyright law, so so can they. And it’s not as if no-one pointed this out to them when they were considering whether to buy Youtube.
But anyway, blocking videos isn’t the point. As I said above, all you need to block in order to solve most of this problem is the videos’ titles. And that’s a piece of piss. Some chancer sticking a copy of Rolling In The Deep on Youtube isn’t a big problem for XL or Adele. What makes it a problem is the fact that it’s called “Rolling In The Deep by Adele – official video” and that it comes up at the top of a Google or Youtube search for “adele rolling in the deep”. The prominence in search results converts directly into hits, which is where the money is made. Force users to specify that it’s a cover or a parody and disallow anything else, and the revenue stream dries up.
But, of course, it’s Google’s revenue stream.
“But, of course, it’s Google’s revenue stream.”
I may be missing something, but if there was just one official version why would everyone who searched for it not just find that, and why would that not provide Google with their revenue stream?
>People don’t report copyrighted material much.
They do report it. But Google make doing so as difficult as possible, and they drag their heels as much as they can, and even when they take something down by then there are plenty of other versions up there as well.
On the other hand, Google actively search out porn and remove it.
Apple have always been arseholes.
This is an interesting example of the problem (for us free marketeers) of the “cross-subsidy problem”.
Interested,
> I may be missing something, but if there was just one official version why would everyone who searched for it not just find that, and why would that not provide Google with their revenue stream?
That only happens if you are willing to put your official version on Youtube. If you object to Google’s insulting royalty rate (as the British indies did), you have the option of going elsewhere, but only in the full knowledge that your product will still be on Youtube but that you will no longer get anything from it. Since Google are the first port of call for most searches and since they obviously prioritise Youtube results for video searches, your ability to go to a rival or to set up your own service is severely constrained.
Cal,
> in a free market if they don’t make money then that’s their tough luck
I’m not sure that’s quite true. I’d say: In a free market if their product doesn’t make money then that’s their tough luck. What we have here is a case where their product is making plenty of money, which someone else is refusing to pass on to them.
Ian,
> Apple have always been arseholes.
Not ‘alf. I used to buy their products back when their OS was a gazillion times better than Windows, but I always found it puzzling how many people preferred the OS and therefore believed Apple were nice. There’s no logic there. Since MS upped their game, I’ve really appreciated being able to abandon Apple.
“If their customers weren’t watching their videos with adverts attached to them, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
We have two customers really, I think. An end-consumer who doesn’t want to part with hard cash for the product but is happy to see ads, and an advertiser who doesn’t give a shit whether the content provider sees any of the cash that they’re paying to google.
So nobody gives a shit.
But, I do see where you’re coming from on the wider issue. And you have good points. There’s a difference between simply not getting paid for your content, and not getting paid for it whilst having to sit and watch someone else cash in.
On the spectrum of responses to Internet piracy issues that we’ve had from companies over the years, asking Google not to be cunts is one of the more reasonable ones.
But in all such matters I revert to the pragmatic.. if you want to get paid by Internet users, sell something that Internet users will pay for.. and the ‘indie’ music scene is traditionally adept when it comes to that sort of thing.
S2,
Not ‘alf. I used to buy their products back when their OS was a gazillion times better than Windows, but I always found it puzzling how many people preferred the OS and therefore believed Apple were nice. There’s no logic there. Since MS upped their game, I’ve really appreciated being able to abandon Apple.
Like Mark Crown, “I thought it was just me”
I suppose the law will eventually catch up with youtube and the like. They are complicit in copyright crime and the law will eventually be brought to bear.
One day, the govt will know what we watch on the net, and content owners will get paid.
Cal – “On the other hand, Google actively search out porn and remove it.”
People recognise porn more or less immediately when they see it. How can they recognise copyrighted material? There is a nasty game of trying to drive people off social media for politically incorrect views. Should Google pull someone going on about Muslims because someone else claims they hold a copyright on some of the material? I would think asking them to prove they are the copyright holder is a perfectly reasonable request.
Maybe some bands put their music up for free. Maybe they want exposure. How is Google to know? They cannot have one policy for the famous and another for everyone else. So they might guess “Rolling in the Deep: official version” should come down. But they need to make sure that some Dixie Blue Grass band has not produced a suddenly popular song of the same name.
I have no sympathy for Youtube at all but this is a problem.
In the meantime Youtube is like Amazon – it allows me to hear and see songs that are too old or obscure to be sold anywhere. That is a plus.
>I’m not sure that’s quite true. I’d say: In a free market if their product doesn’t make money then that’s their tough luck. What we have here is a case where their product is making plenty of money, which someone else is refusing to pass on to them.
Was it not obvious that I didn’t disagree with that?
>People recognise porn more or less immediately when they see it.
You’re not listening. YouTube don’t just remove porn on the basis that someone complains about tit. It is their official, publically-stated policy to remove it (and it has been their unofficial policy for many years before then).
> I would think asking them to prove they are the copyright holder is a perfectly reasonable request.
You clearly know nothing of how YouTube operate in this sphere.
Cal – “You’re not listening. YouTube don’t just remove porn on the basis that someone complains about tit. It is their official, publically-stated policy to remove it (and it has been their unofficial policy for many years before then).”
Yes I am. Anyone can more or less immediately recognise porn. You don’t have to be a member of the public. A low level drone working for Youtube can recognise it too. You see it, you delete it. Copyright material is not that easy. If you see it, it doesn’t mean it should be deleted. First you have to check whether Adele or her record company want it up. Many people might.
“You clearly know nothing of how YouTube operate in this sphere.”
Indeed. But I do know something about how Amazon works in this area. Because a lot of people are taking old, out of copyright books and publishing them on Amazon. Some of them are then enforcing their “copyright” by showing they put their version up first and asserting Amazon should take down all other copies of said book. What precisely should Amazon do about this? Delete on the first complaint? How do they know who has the copyright? Again, asking people to prove they are the copyright holder is not unreasonable.
I thought recognising original songs is automated these days. Certainly, Facebook will stop you uploading your own video with the soundtrack hoiked from a mainstream record and I’m quite sure this is automated. No reason why YouTube can’t do the same.
>Again, asking people to prove they are the copyright holder is not unreasonable.
Sure, but YouTube have no interest in that, and basically just let anybody upload anything (for the most part — see below for exceptions).
>No reason why YouTube can’t do the same.
YouTube supposedly does have this sort of software, but it seems to be a hopeless mess at the moment, and they have no great desire to sort it out. It doesn’t help that PPL and PRS (the music collection agencies in the UK) have been pretty rubbish at dealing with this issue (as they are with most issues).
Occasionally the software does kick in, but mainly to stop musicians I know from uploading their own songs!
I’m not sure what Tim is either surprised or complaining about. This is just one facet of the end game of decades of training consumers to believe that (a) everything is free, and (b) for the remaining stuff that isn’t free the stuff that’s cheapest is always the best. What is so different about this and “interns” giving their prospective employers a “free trial”?
What is so different from any other leverage of market position, or even simply position of dominance in the customer/supplier relationship? Most of us are used to being in the weaker position most of the time, whether as suppliers or customers. My customers want a discount because they’ve not used me before, then they want a discount because it’s repeat business. You are up against trained and experienced outsourcing managers who chop each project up into little bits and care only about getting a proposal in to have each individual bit done by the lowest bidder regardless of quality or ability. No care that in a year’s time the entire budget is blown away with change orders because everyone is playing the game. And as a supplier, even at the quality end, you now have to play that game too, which is sad. Back to apple, the indie labels only aren’t used to it because they don’t sell to people in a position of market power. Now they have no choice and it’s hurting.
@S2
‘That only happens if you are willing to put your official version on Youtube. If you object to Google’s insulting royalty rate (as the British indies did), you have the option of going elsewhere, but only in the full knowledge that your product will still be on Youtube but that you will no longer get anything from it. ‘
Ah right.
@BiG
Re ‘free’ stuff, most people who make music in bands start out doing it for nothing, and unless they fly out to Island studios and get famous producers to make their stuff for them actually producing it is piss cheap. So there’s no particular reason beyond ‘we want more cash’ that it ought not to be close to free. Now. I think that’s a perfectly acceptable reason, but I think you;re suggesting that stuff being free (or close to?) affects quality, and I don’t think that’s always true.
SMFS,
It’s really not a big problem. Google could simply allow bands to register their song titles with them. Since they’re running a search engine, they’re supposed to want that sort of information anyway.
I find that any short conversation about this with people who aren’t morons yields a few viable solutions. Google have some of the world’s most intelligent people and have had years to figure this out, and they’ve managed to have not one single idea. Funny, that.
> So they might guess “Rolling in the Deep: official version” should come down. But they need to make sure that some Dixie Blue Grass band has not produced a suddenly popular song of the same name.
Why would it be difficult for Google to tell the difference between “Adele: Rolling In The Deep” and “The Tricksy Dixie Pixies: Rolling In The Deep”?
> How is Google to know?
I suppose they could use a search engine. If only they had access to one.
> Because a lot of people are taking old, out of copyright books and publishing them on Amazon. Some of them are then enforcing their “copyright” by showing they put their version up first and asserting Amazon should take down all other copies of said book. What precisely should Amazon do about this?
Refuse the requests because they regard works that are out of copyright and therefore copyright law doesn’t apply to them. Wow, that was a tough one.
Sorry, was it supposed to be somehow relevant to a discussion of works that are under copyright?
Tim N,
> I thought recognising original songs is automated these days.
Shazam nailed this over a decade ago. The technology has existed for longer than Youtube. Google’s protestations that it’s impossible or impractical are absurd — especially when you can install that tech on Google’s phones yourself, for free.
You don’t even have to search out Shazam, Google’s own “Sound Search” does the job (and directs you to their mp3 shop)
It might even come pre-installed these days: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.ears&hl=en_GB
Squander Two – “It’s really not a big problem. Google could simply allow bands to register their song titles with them. Since they’re running a search engine, they’re supposed to want that sort of information anyway.”
So the solution is a massive investment by Google in a database which has to be constantly updated? You can see why Google might not like this approach, no?
“Why would it be difficult for Google to tell the difference between “Adele: Rolling In The Deep” and “The Tricksy Dixie Pixies: Rolling In The Deep”?”
Because their computer would have to tell the difference between “Wow! This is Adele’s Rolling in the Deep” and “Wow! This sounds just like Adele’s Rolling in the Deep” and so we are back with a massive investment in time and labour to look at every film clip.
“Refuse the requests because they regard works that are out of copyright and therefore copyright law doesn’t apply to them. Wow, that was a tough one.”
We are back with my original question – how does Google know that they are out of copyright? Amazon does not. How do they tell books out of copyright from books in copyright of the same name? How many titles would Google have to check?
“Sorry, was it supposed to be somehow relevant to a discussion of works that are under copyright?”
Yes it was. Sorry to see it went right over your head.
> So the solution is a massive investment by Google in a database which has to be constantly updated?
No, that database already exists. They would just have to stop refusing to use it.
> You can see why Google might not like this approach, no?
I couldn’t give less of a fuck whether Google like being asked to obey the law.
> Because their computer would have to tell the difference between “Wow! This is Adele’s Rolling in the Deep” and “Wow! This sounds just like Adele’s Rolling in the Deep” and so we are back with a massive investment in time and labour to look at every film clip.
Really, no. I don’t think you have the faintest idea how any of this tech works.
> how does Google know that they are out of copyright?
I think you’ve misunderstood Google. They are not a company who have difficulty recognising copyright; they are a company who are well aware of what is under copyright and what isn’t and choose to infringe it wherever possible and see what they can get away with and whether anyone objects. See their completely illegal book-scanning operation as an example.
On the original story, Apple have backed down because (reading between the lines) Taylor Swift threatened not to put her music on Apple if they didn’t. Good for her.