Apple’s new Radio service is now official, and Pandora is coming under fire for being tight-fisted. Interesting, then, to hear of figures dug out by the Wall Street Journal, which suggest that Apple is being ever-so-slightly more generous with its deal.
According to the Journal, Apple will pay 0.13 cents and 15 per cent of advertising revenue to major labels every time a song is played on iTunes Radio in its first year of operation. In the second year, that will hop up to 0.14 cents and 19 per cent.
That compares to 0.12 cents per song paid by Pandora, according to the WSJ. Add to that that apparently Apple is offering twice the royalty rate to publishers that Pandora does, and it seems Cook and co are actually being fairly… nice.
There are some caveats. Apple won’t need to pay up if a song is played for less than 20 seconds or if it’s already in your iTunes library — but those conditions sound kinda fair. Pandora, obviously, claims that comparison between it and Apple are unfair, but… yeah, not really. Given that Apple’s Radio is going to be a go-to for many iOS users, it will be interesting to see how the deal turns out for it. [WSJ via Engadget]