Why is it that Spotify is typically villified by artists, while Apple is lauded as a savior?  In a telling interview with the Black Keys, drummer Patrick Carney was intensely critical of Spotify, its leadership and its dangerously-low payouts, but contrasted Apple as the more artist-friendly alternative.

 “I imagine that if Spotify does become something that people are willing to pay for, then I’m sure iTunes will just create their own service, and do it themselves.  And they’re actually more fair to artists.”

Part of the reason is that Apple is more friendly to artists, and far more transparent than Spotify.  Since the beginning, Apple has negotiated good faith payout percentages on paid downloads for copyright owners, whether the label or artist (via services like Tunecore).  And we all know what those payouts are – ie, 70 percent of retail.  There aren’t backroom deals with major labels and shady ownership stakes involved; artist payouts aren’t a frustrating mystery.

And when the clouds blew in, Apple was also negotiating with labels to secure the rights for iTunes Match – despite a murky legal terrain.  Amazon and Google weren’t as friendly.

But is that the full story?  Apple’s good guy glow is shining once again on Match, which pays artists modest amounts for cloud-based listens.  These are a small fraction of what Spotify pays (imagine that), yet somehow, you hear the word ‘bonus‘ tossed around repeatedly on this.  The logic is that the consumer already purchased the song or ripped it from a CD, therefore any extra money is nice to have.  It’s icing on the cake.

But what about the fans that didn’t purchase or rip these songs in the first place?  It’s almost impossible to measure percentages here, but collections of 10,000+ songs are rarely acquired through legitimate methods.  And for years, the industry estimated that 19 out of every 20 downloads were obtained illegally.  Indeed, in the iPod-toting heyday, 10,000 or even 20,000 songs was nothing impressive, and easily managed by the iTunes app and accompanying iPod whatever.  Of course, iTunes+iPod (and ultimately iPhone) was designed to handle, organize, and sync these massive loads with ease.

Which means Apple’s wildly-successful iTunes ecosystem was a major motivator for illegal acquisition in the first place, and an integral reason for the massive devaluation in recordings.  And the beauty, from the vantage point of Steve Jobs, was that Apple wasn’t doing anything illegal yet making billions off of hardware.

A fairly mainstream experience, circa 2008…

The rest is recent history.  Limewire died but downloads continued, while huge swaths of fans shifted to YouTube or Spotify.  But not entirely, which means that in the current battle between Spotify streams and cloud-enabled collections, the hangover of billions of stolen MP3s remains a huge part of this picture.  Which also means that Apple is ‘matching’ lots of dirty downloads, while sprinkling penny fractions on top of it all.

So does that make them the good guy, and iTunes Match a ‘bonus’?