Taylor Swift, who has spoken out against both Spotify and Apple Music within the past year in defense of artist royalties, recently explained to Vanity Fair why she praises Apple Music for their care about artist’s concerns and why she derides Spotify.
When Apple agreed to change policy about paying artists, Swift says she felt that the company “treated me like I was a voice of a creative community that they actually cared about.” Swift then agreed to put her new album, 1989, exclusively on Apple Music. In November, Swift pulled all of her music from Spotify to protest the service’s meager royalty payments on its free, ad-supported tier, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s response — that his company is helping the music industry monetize business previously lost from piracy and has paid millions to artists and labels. She explained to Vanity Fair that “the start-up with no cash flow reacted to criticism like a corporate machine.”
While Swift’s argument that music streamers don’t fairly pay artists has certainly been echoed by multiple parties, Apple Music and Spotify are an apples-to-oranges comparison. It’s unrealistic to ask Spotify to discontinue its free tier on a whim, considering that it would alienate 55 million customers, would require a complete revamp of the entire service, and would be counterproductive to the service’s already unprofitable bottom line. In comparison, Apple Music’s decision to pay artists during its three month free trial period was comparably easy as the service was starting from scratch and has, literally, hundreds of billions of dollars in cash at its disposal with one of the world’s biggest and most influential corporations behind it.
T-Swift may have won a small victory against Apple Music for musicians and rights holders, but she still has a long way to go if she wants to make the streaming music industry more fairly compensate struggling artists……
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