> Primephonic is no longer available for new subscribers and will be taken offline beginning September 7. Apple Music plans to launch a dedicated classical music app next year combining Primephonic’s classical user interface that fans have grown to love with more added features.
Why would they buy the service just to kill it off for at least four months?
Copyright is probably not that big of a deal, given that it's classical music, and the userbase will probably dissolve in these months. So why spend the money?
> Copyright is probably not that big of a deal, given that it's classical music
Ahem, cough, you've just made the understatement of the century there !
The legal situation regarding music goes waaaayyyyy beyond basic copyright.
It highly specialist field there are lawyers who do nothing but music rights all day, every day.
Google is your friend, but as a very basic outline, you have to consider:
- The use of the recorded music (and hence the rights of the record companies and the performers)
- The use of the composition and lyrics
- Distribution permissions
And, of course if you are not the end-user but the operator of a streaming service then this will likely add not remove complexity.
Whole big books have been written on the subject (e.g. Kohn on Music Licensing at a mere 1636 pages). I'm not even going to begin to try to summarise it - especially as IANAL anyway !
Likely just an acquihire. I love classical music and never heard of Primephonic, so the user base was probably not that significant, at least by Apple standards.
