It’s Taylor Swift’s world now — we’re just living in it.
Only an alien could make the tech giant change its mind
If someone told me, “Taylor Swift is a space alien who was sent to Earth to test the limits of singular power on the human species,” I’d just nod and carry on.
That makes total sense. This is her world now and we are just living inside it, like figurines in a snow globe. Ms. Swift, our benevolent ruler, decides when to lift us off the table and start shaking. Then she smiles, ever so sweetly, as her pixie dust flutters down from plastic neon clouds.
If you don’t believe she’s in full control, consider what happened on Sunday.
T-Swizzle (that’s her intergalactic name) wrote an open letter to Apple. The tech behemoth once believed the world existed inside its snow globe. Then it got her letter and was Swiftly disabused of the notion.
Apple is starting a music streaming service on June 30. It is offering consumers a free trial for three months. This 90-day period of free was to be offset by 90 days of not paying royalties to musicians.
It’s as if I decided to enter the, I don’t know, banana smoothie market. So I set up a table along the new Queens Quay and start handing out free drinks. Then when Chiquita asks for payment on the bananas I needed to make the smoothies, I throw up my palms and say, “But I didn’t charge the customer.”
That’s not Chiquita’s problem, banana boy. And subsidizing Apple’s new startup isn’t an artist’s problem.
“I say to Apple with all due respect, it’s not too late to change this policy and change the minds of those in the music industry who will be deeply and gravely affected by this,” wrote Swift. “We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.”
Boom. In less time than it takes to watch the entire Star Wars franchise, Apple did an about-face. It reversed the policy.
This is where Swift’s altruism and omnipotence converge: she was never at risk of being “deeply and gravely” affected. The quarterly royalties she gets from any one source wouldn’t even cover her monthly expenditures on stilettos and lemon drops.
Swift is running her own economy. She is immune to industry machinations. If she decides to distribute her music via carrier pigeon, all air travel would be halted tomorrow as the skies teemed with millions of birds.
No, as she wrote: “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.”
In other words, she’s picking a fight with a formidable opponent to help those who can’t throw punches. If a young songwriter did what Swift did, that creator would now be locked inside a secret prison outside of Cupertino, Calif., humming sad ditties while polishing the bezels of Apple Watches.
Her letter, simply titled “To Apple, Love Taylor,” was a music industry variation on John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in 1961: “Ask not what your musicians can do for your streaming service. Ask what your streaming service can do for your musicians.”
No wonder Elvis Costello retweeted it and added, “A word from our future president.” No wonder dozens of figurines, stunned by Apple’s epic climbdown, promptly flocked to social media, joking about all the other problems Swift should tackle: the financial crisis in Greece, ISIS, gun control, racism, Donald Trump.
It’s getting impossible not to admire Swift. In an industry pocked with skittish followers, she’s a leader. Unlike many of her peers, she has a moral compass wired to her World Domination To-Do List. (It’s hard to imagine Justin Bieber taking a principled stand on anything that does not involve supercars or lap dances.)
But from showing up at weddings to inviting fans to her house, T-Swizzle is rewriting the rules of connecting with an audience. From lobbing grenades at sexism to championing the rights of future Taylor Swifts, she’s become the most powerful artist in the world while also caring about the less fortunate, which relatively speaking, is everyone else inside her snow globe.
Taylor Swift is not from around here. But we are lucky to have her. vmenon@thestar.ca
If she decides to distribute her music via carrier pigeon, all air travel would be halted tomorrow as the skies teemed with millions of birds.