Inside Apple Music’s Taylor Swift Negotiations
Taylor Swift's now famous open letter demanding that Apple Music pay artists during their 90 day free trial period was both unexpected and perfectly timed, according to details shared by her label boss at a Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference this week.
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“The conversation started with myself and the executives of Apple, just as a label group conversation of ‘I can’t support this: you need to pay us from the first stream’,” Bis Machine label boss Scott Borchetta shared during an on-stage interview at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference.
“And those conversations were leading up to the weekend where Taylor posted the blog. She and I hadn’t spoken that week, so she literally texted me, she said ‘Don’t be mad’ with the link… I said ‘you don’t have any idea how good your timing is right now…”
Apple VP Eddie Cue was then brought into Brochetta's talks with Apple Music's Jimmy Iovine and Ian Rogers. “Here’s the good news: you haven’t launched yet," ho told the execs. "You can do the right thing. And if you do the right thing, the artist community globally is going to look at you as the good guy.”
Watch portions of the interview here:
