A little over half a century ago, the Canadian intellectual Marshall McLuhan, perhaps the most famous media theorist and philosopher of communication ever, wrote the immortal line, ‘The medium is the message’. It’s hard to tell whether or not he had the foresight to know that now, in 2015, an American popstar, best known for her sick beats, meticulously-crafted goofiness, and ruthlessly commercial charm, would come along to crush his long-standing and widely held concept with a Tumblr post signed off with “Love, Taylor.”
When her career as a teenage country singer took off, Swift’s meteoric rise to pop-music superstardom was in no way a sure thing. Her career was defined as being a plucky underdog, perpetually the girl next door, unlucky in love, strumming on the banjo heartstrings worn firmly on her sleeve.
She is the underdog no more.
Last week, Apple, one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, appeared to change its mind all because of some concerned words written by Swift. In her Tumblr blog, the popstar, who plays the first of two sold-out shows in Dublin this evening, expressed some concerns about how Apple was not going to pay musicians for the free three-month trial it is offering to customers to poach their financially-lucrative streaming fidelity from Spotify when it launches Apple Music later this month.
1989, Swift’s current smash-hit album, would not be appearing on Apple Music, Swift explained.
“I’m sure you are aware that Apple Music will be offering a free 3 month trial to anyone who signs up for the service. I’m not sure you know that Apple Music will not be paying writers, producers, or artists for those three months,” she wrote. “We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.”
Within hours, Apple, which was already being lobbied by a number of independent music producers, had reversed its policy. Eddy Cue, the company’s SVP of Internet Software & Services, tweeted his trillion-dollar company’s change of heart, giving top billing to Swift and copying her turn of phrase.
#AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming, even during customer’s free trial period
— Eddy Cue (@cue) June 22, 2015
We hear you @taylorswift13 and indie artists. Love, Apple
— Eddy Cue (@cue) June 22, 2015
Make no mistake, Swift has truly achieved something incredible by upsetting the apple cart. The tech giant may well have backed down anyway had Swift not intervened, but the speed at which it did after Swift’s open letter goes to show the incredible clout and power she has amassed in just a few short years. And it reveals a Swift considerably more potent and savvy than Beyoncé and the rest of the Tidal signatories.
Taylor Swift has unseated Beyoncé as the most important popstar in the world, and she's done it all by herself. She's shown a shrewdness in understanding both how to market herself and how to conduct her affairs, and stares down music industry executives with an icy glare reminiscent of a Hitchcock blonde. And she doesn't blink for a second.
She achieved in a week what Tidal's weak and limpid launch has failed to do in three months, earning almost universally positive press (albeit with a some conspiracy theorists claiming it was all designed by Apple anyway and a photographer ). Tidal, the premium streaming service launched by Jay Z and his wife Beyoncé (along with a who's who roster of some of the wealthiest and most successful musicians on the planet), now looks increasingly like a task being run by a group of contestants on The Apprentice.
Delighted to be changing the face of music, the Tidal signatories await their turn to put pen to paper
Both Beyoncé and Swift made attempts to change the face of the music industry with the written word. The difference between the two is that Swift didn’t just write her name. She didn't stand on a stage, surrounded by a bunch of millionaires bemoaning that their cut of the money wasn't big enough. She didn't align herself with the pampered and the spoiled, looking miserably po faced while waiting to take – one assumes – a Mont Blanc fountain pen to a piece of paper.
It's hard to take a premium-priced music streaming service that wants to return music to the artists seriously when it's launched by a man who has to pay half of the royalties of one of his songs to the Swiss pensioner whose music he failed to credit. It's hard to swallow the noblesse oblige pretensions of a streaming service whose signatories are the only ones wealthy enough to be able to afford the speaker systems to listen to its superior quality audio properly. It's hard to convince the world to feel sorry for the one percent.
Taylor Swift, on the other hand, simultaneously spoke to her fans, her haters, Apple, and the rest of the world by standing up for the little guy on Twitter and Tumblr. And her message changed the medium.
The Pop Shot is a weekly segment dedicated to bringing Newstalk's George Hook up to date with the modern world of pop culture. You can listen back to last week's show below:
