Apple dances to Taylor Swift's tunes

This deserves a song or two of its own.

Here’s the storyline: One of the world’s most influential companies (Apple) launches a music streaming service (Apple Music) and offers customers a free trial period of three months.

The generally generous firm, however, says it won’t be paying participating artists any royalty for their songs during the free trial period, smartly shifting the cost of luring customers for its new service onto to individual artists, writers and producers, some of whom could really use the money.

Stage is thus set for one of the world’s most influential women artists (Taylor Swift) to jump in and boycott the service on the grounds that the deal is unfair and that many artists (excluding her) really need the money.

She writes an open letter to Apple – nicely worded, but firm – explaining that “I’ll be holding back my album, 1989, from the new streaming service” even as “Apple has been and will continue to be one of my best partners in selling music.”

She says: “This is not about me. Thankfully I am on my fifth album and can support myself, my band, crew, and entire management team by playing live shows.” Of course she can – Swift was recently ranked as the world’s #6 most influential world leader by none other than Fortune magazine, and she earned a neat $64 million last year, according to Forbes magazine.

“This is about the new artist or band that has just released their first single and will not be paid for its success.

"This is about the young songwriter who just got his or her first cut and thought that the royalties from that would get them out of debt.

"This is about the producer who works tirelessly to innovate and create, just like the innovators and creators at Apple are pioneering in their field…but will not get paid for a quarter of a year’s worth of plays on his or her songs,” writes Taylor in her blog post on Tumblr.

What happened next surprised many, but is being seen as a social media victory for Apple by analysts. Apple blinked. Or bowed, or danced to Taylor Swift’s tunes… whichever way one wants to put it.

In a series of tweets this morning, Apple’s senior executive Eddy Cue acknowledged that the Cupertino-based giant had heard the artist and will be reversing its stance on non-payments during the trial period.

“We hear you @taylorswift13 and indie artists. Love, Apple,” he tweeted.

“#AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming, even during customer’s free trial period,” he wrote next.

“Apple will always make sure that artist are paid #iTunes #AppleMusic,” he finally said.

Taylor Swift was quick to respond too. “I am elated and relieved. Thank you for your words of support today. They listened to us,” she tweeted.

All’s well that ends well?

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