Submitted by Marshall Walker on
Taylor Swift has forced Apple to change its policy on how it will pay artists for its upcoming music streaming service by penning a Tumblr post titled, "To Apple, Love Taylor." In the letter Swift explains why she withheld her album, 1989, from Apple Music. Swift said she found it "shocking," "disappointing," and completely unlike Apple not to pay writers, producers and artists for songs played during a user's free 90-day-trial of Apple Music.
Today Apple senior vice president of internet services and software, Eddy Cue took to Twitter to tell Swift and indie artists that Apple has "heard them" and they plan to pay artists "for streaming, even during customer’s free trial period." Cue also sat down with Billboard to explain Apple's change of heart.
"We've been hearing a lot of concern from indie artists about not getting paid during the three-month trial period, which was never our intent," Cue explained when asked it the decision prompted by Taylor Swift's letter. "We had originally negotiated these deals based on paying them a higher royalty rate on an ongoing basis to compensate for this brief time. But when I woke up this morning and saw what Taylor had written, it really solidified that we needed to make a change."
Cue also said he had reached out to Swift and she was "thrilled and very thankful" with Apple's decision.
This is not the first time Swift has went up against a music streaming app. The singer also pulled her music from Spotify, saying that streaming services were "a bit like a grand experiment" and she was not willing to contribute her life's work to an experiment that didn't "fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators" of music.Today Swift is being credited for changing the music industry by some. Her boyfriend Calvin Harris even tweeted, "I just played a gig inside a giant owl and my girl just changed the entire music industry what a day."