To Apple, Love Taylor
I write this to explain why I’ll be holding back my album, 1989, from the new streaming service, Apple Music. I feel this deserves an explanation because Apple has been and will continue to be one of my best partners in selling music and creating ways for me to connect with my fans. I respect the…
There is something to be said about artists being paid for this period of time Apple intends to make its music streaming platform free. I don’t agree that they should not pay them, but I don’t think artists should write this off like some have done with Spotify.
Taylor Swift has never really struck me as an artist who gets these platforms. She left Spotify after saying “music should not be free” even though there was a constant stream of revenue coming from people listening to her music, more so than if people bought it outright on CD.
Part of this has been down to piracy, people don’t get the concept of paying for music or indeed paying for content online. But there is a difference between streaming that content and downloading it.
Streaming music is now seen as a commodity. I can go from one platform to the other and stream the same music and have access to the same albums, the main difference being in how its distributed. Taylor Swift doesn’t like this, nor does Jay Z.
They believe that the consumer is the commodity in this war over who gets what and how its presented. And its probably a tension that will remain for the rest of time.
As the show comes to an end, I think this scene has to be its most poignant. The top comment nails it for me: “This is poetry, tragedy, art. I will always consider Mad Men "The Great American Drama Series.” Not disregarding other all time greats such as The Wire, Breaking Bad and especially The Sopranos, but, at least for me, in terms of ambition, density/profundity, filmmaking, and characterization, Mad Men stands above them all. Not that it really matters, but I just love it so damn much.“
