Apple announced this morning it will change its policies on paying artists who contribute to its music streaming service after global pop star Taylor Swift took the company to task.
Apple will launch its music streaming service, Apple Music, in 100 countries next week. Users will have free access to Apple Music for three months before paying $9.99 a month.
However, Swift and other smaller indie labels took issue with Apple's decision to not pay royalties to artists during the trial period. "Three months is a long time to go unpaid, and it is unfair to ask anyone to work for nothing," said Swift in a Tumblr post.
Swift stated she was speaking on behalf of "the new artist that has just released their first single and will not be paid for its success". The singer announced, in the same post, she would hold back her hit album 1989 from the streaming service.
This morning, Apple senior VP of Internet and services Eddy Cue tweeted: "#AppleMusic will pay artists for streaming, even during customers' free trial period." This was followed by: "We hear you Taylor Swift and other indie artists, Love Apple".
Cue said in an interview on tech Web site Re/code, the decision to pay artists during the trial period was made after consulting Apple CEO Tim Cook: "It's something we worked on together. Ultimately we both wanted to make the change."
Swift replied in a tweet, saying she was relieved and elated. The pop star has fought with music streaming services before. Reuters reported she pulled her entire catalogue of music from online streaming platform Spotify last November and refused to offer "1989" on streaming services, saying the business had drastically shrunk the numbers of paid album sales.
However, she has supported Apple's drive to supplant advertising-based free streaming services with one funded by user subscriptions.
Apple has not yet announced if South Africa is on the list of countries to receive the music streaming service next week.
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