Taylor Swift managed to make waves in June, but instead of doing it with a popular single, it was because she managed to make Apple change their own tune.
On June 21, Taylor Swift published a Tumblr post that criticized Apple’s decision not to pay artists during a three-month trial period, which it would offer to anyone signing up for its Apple Music service. Apple, almost immediately after, backtracked on its decision and confirmed that it would pay artists during the three-month trial. As a result, Apple signed up the Beggars Group and other record labels that were holding out. Taylor Swift even announced that her latest album 1989, would be available through Apple Music.
Now, some more of the backstory has been revealed by Scott Borchetta, the head of Big Machine Records and the person that signed up Taylor Swift when she was 14. Borchetta made an appearance at Fortune‘s Brainstorm Tech conference, and outlined how Taylor Swift’s open letter to Apple actually surprised him, and the other executives at the label, but that it was impossible to ignore for its timing and importance.“She literally texted me and said, ‘Don’t be mad,’ with the link,” Borchetta said. “She was in Europe. I responded and said, ‘You don’t have any idea how good your timing is right now.“
Borchetta, and other labels, were having trouble negotiating with Apple regarding the three-month trial. Borchetta even confirmed that he told Apple that his label couldn’t support no compensation for three months, but that negotiations just weren’t going anywhere until Swift’s Tumblr posting.
After the letter was posted, Borchetta took a conference call with Apple’s Jimmy Iovine and Eddy Cue, and the Cupertino-based company relented on their initial plans, confirming compensation during the three-month trial period. And the rest, as they say, is history. If anything, this is just another indication that Taylor Swift, one of the most popular artists ever, was enough of a presence, on her own, to sway Apple’s decision on something they were apparently flat-out refusing to work with from the major record labels.
[via Fortune]
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