With a Tap of Taylor Swift’s Fingers, Apple Retreated (original) (raw)
Media|With a Tap of Taylor Swift’s Fingers, Apple Retreated
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Taylor Swift on Saturday in Cologne, Germany. Few artists have enjoyed her success in challenging the industry’s establishment.Credit...Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images for Tas
- June 22, 2015
In an age of depressed record sales, her albums sell by the millions. Her tours fill arenas around the world. And a complimentary tweet to her nearly 60 million followers can help kick-start another singer’s career.
But as Taylor Swift’s victory in a one-day battle against Apple this week showed, she also has a rare power to influence the music business itself, at a time of deep anxiety among artists big and small about the value of their work. These days, the concern is about the value of music in the digital age, and by taking on Apple — and Spotify before it — Ms. Swift has emerged as perhaps the most effective negotiator in the business, for her own benefit as well as others’.
“She is the most powerful person in the music industry,” said David Lowery of the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, and an advocate for artists’ rights. “She is able to bring the debate to the mainstream.”
Ms. Swift reaches the masses through her adept use of social media, whether teasing a new album on Instagram or taking on industry economics on her blog. On Sunday morning, Ms. Swift wrote a diplomatic but stern Tumblr post taking Apple to task for not paying royalties on test drives of its new streaming music service, set to open on June 30.
“We don’t ask you for free iPhones,” she wrote. “Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.”
By midnight Sunday, Apple — one of the most powerful companies in the world — had capitulated to the 25-year-old pop star, saying it would pay royalties on all music for the three-month trials. One of its senior executives, Eddy Cue, even said he called Ms. Swift personally to give her the news.
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