Photographer Jason Sheldon replies to Taylor Swift's open letter to Apple

[Tataffe]

Taylor Swift's open letter to Apple was one of the big news last week. It was about how Apple would not be paying Artists (or people who call themselves so) during the three month trial of their new music streaming service "Apple Music" and how she felt that this was not okay.

 

It seems however that Ms. Swift has forgotten to sweep in front of her own front door, though. Yesterday, concert photographer Jason Sheldon has published an equally open letter to Swift about how she (or her record label) treat his kind.

 

 

For every artist that is in a secure enough financial and influential position to stand up against the likes of Apple without having to worry that Apple will publicly block your ability to earn a living from their iTunes market place, there are hundreds of professional concert photographers who don’t enjoy that security.

 

 

If you take points 2 and 3 in that contract (which is provided to Photographers who need to agree to those terms before they are allowed to do their job in photographing you for editorial outlets), it appears to be a complete rights grab, and demands that you are granted free and unlimited use of our work, worldwide, in perpetuity.  You say in your letter to Apple that “Three months is a long time to go unpaid”.  But you seem happy to restrict us to being paid once, and never being able to earn from our work ever again, while granting you the rights to exploit our work for your benefit for all eternity.

 

[...]

 

Photographers need to earn a living as well. Like Apple, you can afford to pay for photographs so please stop forcing us to hand them over to you while you prevent us from publishing them more than once, ever.

 

Source: https://junction10.wordpress.com/2015/06/21/those-in-glass-houses-shouldnt-throw-stones/

[Castdeath97]

Typical really and more than proves how much we are over paying music artists nowadays. These money hogs don't deserve a cent, period!