One could look at Today at Apple as part of a centuries-old tradition. "There's a history of companies benefiting from the creativity that black and brown folks bring, and the profits from the creativity don't always come back to the folks who made that brand happen," Carter says.

"There's good stuff behind the idea, but it's about making sure they're following through," she continues. "What does equity look like in this entire process?"

Apple paying artists in merchandise "is insulting, and furthermore is insulting in the context of diversity," says music journalist David Turner, who covers the streaming industry in his popular newsletter, Penny Fractions. "Diversity isn’t just putting people’s faces on things: it has to mean you respect them and are giving them equal access to power."

Indeed, Today at Apple gives the company an inclusive image for next to nothing. The free gifts artists receive for Today at Apple range from $149 to $379 in retail value, and cost Apple a fraction of that amount to produce. (Research firm IHS Technology estimated in 2015 that an Apple Watch only costs $83.70 to manufacture, though Apple's Tim Cook and other industry experts dispute that claim.)

Despite Apple's public-facing image, the company's most recent diversity report shows a different picture inside the company, whose U.S. workforce is 54-percent white. (The company's leadership is even less diverse at 66-percent white.) Globally, the company is 68-percent male. In contrast, the roster of unpaid artists who’ve performed at Today at Apple in San Francisco are mostly women of color.

Turner elaborates that Today at Apple "doesn't serve any purpose but making the company look better; bringing down wages for these artists; and essentially saying diversity is something that we're going to pay lip service towards, but not something we deeply care about."

The exposure economy

In the Bay Area, Apple operates in an economy where paid opportunities for artists are scarce. Meanwhile, influencer culture sells up-and-coming artists the idea that getting one's work in front of enough eyeballs will eventually lead to monetary income. Conditions are ripe for exploitation in this climate, and it's common for corporations to ask ambitious, under-resourced creatives to work for low or no pay in return for "exposure."

But working for low or no pay devalues creative labor as a whole. Rather than setting up artists for paid opportunities, unpaid and work-for-trade gigs become the norm, making it easier for companies to take advantage of the next hopeful.

"I'm really grateful for the opportunity and experience," says Vanessa Nguyen, a.k.a. Besame, a visual artist and event producer who was part of a session that included performances and a panel discussion with her creative collective, Le Vanguard. "But definitely knowing they're a giant company that's not going bankrupt, it's kind of weird that they can't compensate talent."

She inquired with Apple representatives about monetary compensation and was told "all they could do was give product out." People in her collective took home Apple TVs, while she received one iPad to share with another person.

The events at Apple's Union Square store also take place in the context of exploding housing costs in the Bay Area, the most expensive rental market in the country. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $3,402 in San Francisco and $2,560 in Oakland, according to apartment-hunting site RentJungle. (Artists in particular are struggling in this economy: a 2015 San Francisco Arts Commission survey found that nearly 70 percent of the 600 respondents had been displaced from their home, work space or both.)

"I think because artists are poor or broke, they're easily exploited," Nguyen says. "We were not really asking for much."

A complicated choice for artists

Still, some artists have positive things to say about the work-for-trade arrangement at Today at Apple events, and see them as a showcase for their work at a busy location. Rocky Rivera characterized her appearance as an opportunity to share skills and, as a San Francisco native, reclaim space in a city where the tech industry has transformed the socioeconomic landscape. In fact, she approached Apple to host her panel and music video-making workshop, not the other way around.

"Not only was I showing my community how to use their devices to create art," she says, "but I was also showing a very unapologetic stance of being a hometown artist that needs to benefit from these tech companies."

Declining to state which product she accepted as payment (though she acknowledges the choice of either AirPods, an Apple TV or an Apple Watch Series 3), Rivera says the exchange felt equitable to her, but added that the issue of how corporations compensate artists is an important conversation. "Every artist has to make that decision: Is this exposure? Is it for a platform they believe in? Is that enough? Or do I feel exploited by this arrangement?"