Take a leaf out of Taylor Swift’s book

Yesterday, Sunday, Taylor Alison Swift wrote an open letter to the world’s largest and most powerful company, Apple. In the letter, published on her personal Tumblr page, the award-winning 25-year-old singer-songwriter told the company that she would not be making her music available on the recently launched Apple Music because the service would not be paying any kind of royalties to artists, composers or producers during its first months, which would be free of charge to the public.

Swift, a multi-instrumentalist who also writes and produces much of her own music, says that the issue at stake is not so much the amounts of money involved, but the principle that music can be considered something that can be offered free of charge during negotiations, and the repercussions of this for other, less successful, artists.

We’re not talking about just anybody here. Swift is one of the most successful artists around, and who has already turned her wrath on Spotify, withdrawing her music from the streaming service in November 2014 after accusing it of offering too much free music and not paying musicians enough. Daniel Ek, Spotify’s founder, replied to Swift in no uncertain terms, calling her arguments “myths”, and although the following month was the company’s most successful, due in large part to promotions, Swift’s decision was a damaging blow to Spotify’s…