Here are highlights from Iovine, plus video of the entire exchange:
On Spotify and Freemium Streaming Services: "We have a problem with this whole 'free' issue… The television industry doesn't have it, the movie industry doesn't have it, but the record industry has it. In my personal opinion -- and this is not Apple's opinion -- that 'free' is a real issue. You have to make a service in order to get over 'free.'
"This whole thing about 'freemium,' maybe at one time we needed it, but right now, to me, it's a shell game, because what these companies are doing is building the old-school traffic. They realize, okay, Snapchat has 100m people, it's worth $16 billion. So if I have 100 million people and a model that has subscription as well, what's my company worth? And they're building an audience on the back of the artist. That bugs me. It really bugs me. It's a shell game. It's like 'we need this', but they don't really need it because we [Apple] don't have a free service. If we had a free service we'd have 500 million people free on our service. We believe if we build something strong enough it will work."
On Taylor Swift's Open Letter: "[Eddy Cue] called up Tim [Cook]. This is Apple, the biggest company in the world. We worked all day Sunday -- Eddy, Tim and I -- and they dealt with it on the spot on a Sunday morning on Father's Day… It was unbelievable. They moved like lightning. I was really impressed, Taylor was impressed. And they did the right thing, more importantly."
Free Advice for Labels: "The labels have to reinvent themselves. They have to keep their importance in the artist's life. It's that simple. And I think they are doing that. My old company is doing that."
On Artists Picking Tours Over Albums: "What I'm hearing now from the labels is 'We don't have enough worldwide superstars.' Well there's a good reason for that: the records are taking a backseat to all the touring. And they should at least be equal. They're not right now, and you're seeing the album being really beat up."
