[nosideeffects]

I think you completely missed the point. Using your own analogies of teachers, this would sort of be like a local government letting all the teachers know that they will be teaching kids without pay for the next 3 months. If this ever happened, any teachers that could would get the hell out of dodge.

[kstrauser]

It's really not like that at all. The teacher scenario has an opportunity cost: if they're busy teaching kids for free, then they're not available for teaching other kids for pay.

In the Apple Music situation, there's likely very little opportunity cost unless we believe that it's going to be so amazingly and instantly successful that it will cannibalize all current revenue streams.

[braythwayt]

    In the Apple Music situation, there's likely very little opportunity cost unless we
    believe that it's going to be so amazingly and instantly successful that it will
    cannibalize all current revenue streams.

You or I may believe whatever we like, but I’ll bet big money that Apple believes that it will be amazingly and instantly successful and further that their entire business plan consists of cannibalizing all current revenue streams.

I don’t think they’d be in this business at all if they didn’t think they had a shot at rendering the competition irrelevant.