aylor Swift has now done something that no other music artist has ever done, forced Apple to change singlehandedly. Taylor has now mandated that Apple compensate all its artists for the music that it uses during the three month free trial that it is offering for its brand new streaming service. Apple has never been known to cater to the demands of a single person, but in this case, it desperately needed to. Apple Music is Apple’s response to the decline in music downloads and the increasing popularity in the “renting” of music provided by companies like Spotify and Pandora. By appeasing Swift, Apple has successfully learned from Spotify’s mistakes and created a good relationship with Taylor and other new indie artists that will inevitably join the streaming service. Not only does this make Apple look noble, but this also makes Spotify look bad, which is exactly what Apple wants.
With Spotify dominating the market share of subscribers with paid and unpaid versions of the music streaming service, Apple Music will be primarily competing with them. This kind of good press will help convince Apple product and service users to switch their loyalty to Apple’s trusted brand. Also, while Apple initially wasn’t going to pay the artists, forking up the cash is actually a non-issue for them. According to CNN Money, Apple currently has over $178 billion in cash reserves. That amount of money is enough to easily buy companies as big as Disney and Netflix. Apple has reconciled itself with the music industry, and since it has a very loyal consumer base, it stands a good chance of supplanting Spotify as the leader in the music streaming industry.
Apple Launches New Music Streaming Service – Is It Ready? by FT Business
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