Swift move by Apple over Taylor’s streaming boycott

Apple moved quickly on Sunday to bow to pressure from pop star Taylor Swift and raise payments to artists for its music streaming service.

The about-face by one of the world’s most powerful companies showed the extraordinary influence of the 25-year-old singer, who had threatened a partial boycott of the new Apple Music service.

Saying that she was speaking up on behalf of artists afraid of upsetting Apple, she had called the company’s behaviour “shocking” over its plan not to pay artists for music streamed during customers’ initial three-month free trial of the service.

Within a few hours, Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, said that the company had changed its policy. Apple music “will pay artist(s) for streaming, even during [customers’] free trial period,” he wrote on Twitter.

Cue told industry journal Billboard that he had called Swift, who is in Amsterdam on her tour, with the news after receiving approval from Apple chief executive Tim Cook.

He said that Apple had never intended to avoid compensation and had heard plenty of concern from others besides Swift, although it was her that moved him to take action.

Apple will launch its new streaming service on June 30 to meet shifting customer demand for unlimited online music catalogues.

On Sunday, Swift said that she would refuse to allow her latest album 1989 – the best-selling American album of the past year – to stream on Apple Music in protest over the lack of payments.

“I find it to be shocking, disappointing and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company,” Swift wrote on Tumblr. “These are not the complaints of a spoiled, petulant child. These are the echoed sentiments of every artist, writer and producer in my social circles who are afraid to speak up publicly because we admire and respect Apple so much.”

After Apple’s U-turn, Swift wrote on Twitter: “I am elated and relieved. Thank you for your words of support today. They listened to us.”

Apple will charge users US$9.99 (Dh36.6) a month for its music service after the trial period.

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Who was Alfred Nobel?

The Nobel Prize was created by wealthy Swedish chemist and entrepreneur Alfred Nobel.

In his will he dictated that the bulk of his estate should be used to fund "prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind".
Nobel is best known as the inventor of dynamite, but also wrote poetry and drama and could speak Russian, French, English and German by the age of 17. The five original prize categories reflect the interests closest to his heart.
Nobel died in 1896 but it took until 1901, following a legal battle over his will, before the first prizes were awarded.

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