Taylor Swift's Exclusive Deal with Apple Music

I recently read an article published by The New York Times on the subject of Taylor Swift’s exclusive streaming deal with Apple for a concert film scheduled to be released next week. As many know, Taylor Swift is the extremely popular pop artist behind the hit songs “Shake it Off”, “Style” and “Wildest Dreams”. After reading the article I decided to do some additional research on where listeners can find Taylor Swift’s music online.

I decided to investigate Spotify—another popular music streaming service—and found that a search for “Taylor Swift” reveals a message that says: “The artist or their representatives have decided not to release this album on Spotify just yet… [we] hope we can change their minds soon.” According to digitaltrends.com, Spotify has over 20 million paid subscribers and 55 million free users. At first glace, it would appear that Ms. Swift has put herself at a disadvantage by choosing to not make her music available to these users, but there’s more to the story.

When Apple Music (Spotify’s streaming competitor) launched back during the summer, users were told that they would receive 3 free months of use before being required to sign up for a $10/month subscription. What Apple didn’t mention was that artists wouldn’t be compensated for these initial 3 months of streaming. In response, Taylor Swift threatened to pull her entire catalogue of songs from the Apple Music service. Within hours, Apple changed their policy to ensure that artists would be compensated for the 3 months of music being streamed to users during the Apple Music trial period.

Perhaps this is simply a question of which company Taylor Swift trusts more to ensure that she turns a ‘fair’ profit from users listening to her music. It’s very likely that this is the case. After all-- it makes sense to continue to partner with a corporation with whom you’ve had previously successful business interactions with. But I’m still intrigued by the existence of this exclusive deal.

When I was in elementary school, programs like Kazaa and Napster were becoming quite problematic sources of illegal (read: free) music distribution. I’m quite sure that all the music executives and artists are aware of the problems that these applications made for the music industry. I suspect that this exclusive streaming deal between Apple and Taylor Swift are somehow a way to ensure that users can’t enjoy popular music without first paying.

It will be interesting to see if other artists jump on the exclusive streaming deal bandwagon… After all, if exclusivity equals profit—why not partner with only 1 streaming service?

NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/business/media/apple-gains-exclusive-streaming-deal-with-taylor-swift.html?ref=technology&_r=0

Digitaltrends article: http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/apple-music-vs-spotify/