Today was a dramatic day for the music industry, as Taylor Swift’s open letter to Apple resulted in the behemoth backtracking on a plan not to pay artists during the first three months of their grand, new streaming experiment. Swift made her choice to withhold music clear, saying, “We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.”
Taylor Swift’s untouchable popularity puts her in the perfect position to shine a light on the many ways musicians are currently getting fucked by many streaming services, and it’s about time someone spoke up. But this is just the beginning of a much larger conversation about how we treat our artists, and the royalties they receive. While Apple has agreed to now pay artists for those first three months, we don’t know how much, and to quote The Verge, this feels like more of the Status Quo. We can’t keep pounding our heads against the wall in an attempt to break out of prison. Someone needs a hammer.