SWIFT JUSTICE
Megastar teaches music-streaming monolith not to bite the hand that feeds it,
The lesson here is to never have "Bad Blood" with Taylor Swift.
The musician published an open letter to Apple on Tumblr on Sunday, titled "To Apple, Love Taylor," where she criticized Apple Music’s plan to not pay artists royalties for its initial three-month trial period. She echoed the concerns that independent music labels have been up in arms about for the past two weeks.
But reaction to Swift was, well, swift, with Apple’s Eddy Cue taking to Twitter and reversing course, saying Apple will now pay artists’ royalty rates during the trial.
This is being hailed as a win for artists, and it does clear up what could have been a dark cloud hanging over Apple Music’s launch.
But it also raises other questions about the imminent rollout of the music streaming service: What does the change actually mean? With independent labels and artists in the midst of a full-scale revolt, the real problem facing Apple Music was potentially launching with huge gaps in its catalogue.
Independents are generally smaller labels, but they also handle some big-name artists. Beggars Banquet, which represents Adele, already said that it wouldn’t be on the service. Others that could have been MIA include Alabama Shakes, Jamie XX, The National and more. The danger was that people would focus on what’s not on Apple Music, as opposed to the millions of songs that are.
What does this mean for artists? Though this is being hailed as a victory for artists, it’s unclear how much Apple will actually pay those artists. (Unless, of course, you’re U2; then you get $100 million to foist your album on every iTunes user.)
Apple has said it will pay artists 71.5 per cent of revenues in the U.S., and around 73 per cent internationally, while other services pay about 70 per cent. But the actual royalty rates for artists are still percentages of a single cent per stream.
Streaming is a business of scale. Apple’s pitch was that it wanted to convert at least 100 million of its downloading customers into paying streamers (Spotify has 75 million users, 20 million of them paid). If they managed that, there would be more people listening and paying for music, so everyone in the chain gets more money. So Apple Music is all good? Apple just solved a huge problem for its launch, but the biggest challenge remains, and it’s exactly the same one every other music streaming service faces: Can it convince people to pay for music again?
Even with big names such as Jay Z on board, Tidal has found this to be a problem. The Wall Street Journal reported that the average iTunes user spends $30 a year on music downloads. At $10 a month, Apple Music needs to convince people to pay four times that.
People online know that music is avail- able for free almost everywhere on websites such as YouTube and Soundcloud, and on free apps such as Songza. For heavy listeners, streaming is more attractive, but casual music fans haven’t found that to be the case.
Apple is putting its not inconsiderable muscle behind streaming, but it will have to use all its marketing powers to convince people. Will Swift’s 1989 be on Apple Music? Short answer: we’re not sure. She famously pulled her music from Spotify and it’s still not there. Swift’s open letter states, "This is not about me," and she writes about artists who are starting out. As she’s already proved, she can do just fine — and probably better — by pulling her music off streaming services.
After Apple Music caved to her complaints, Swift tweeted: "I am elated and relieved. Thank you for your words of support today. They listened to us." But while many online have asked, she has yet to say that she is actually on board with the service. What about Canada? Apple Music is expected to launch in 100 countries starting June 30, but it’s still not known if Canada is going to be one of them. Canadian pricing is also still not confirmed. The Apple Music landing page still just says “Coming Soon.”
Traditionally, Canada is a not a launch country for new Apple products — the company’s upcoming News product is launching first in the U.S., U.K. and Australia.
But we can confirm that many local independent labels have been approached for the new service. The company has made a big deal of the fact that Apple Music’s new playlists are going to be curated, and some Canadians have been tapped to help create them. Those two things might just be for other markets, but they could also be signs that a launch here might not be too far away.