Taylor Swift becomes the most powerful woman in tech as she socially shames Apple into paying up
- Summary:
- Social media shaming leads to Apple's capitulation - are there lessons for customer experience management from Taylor Swift's outburst?
Who’s the most powerful woman in the tech industry? Meg Whitman at HP? Marissa Mayer at Yahoo!? Safra Catz at Oracle?
No, it seems its Taylor Swift. Or at least it was for a few hours on Sunday.
Er, yes, that Taylor Swift, the singer, who over the weekend used social media as a battering ram to get Apple to do a proverbial and highly public reverse ferret on its royalties policy.
Specifically Swift, who emphasized her admiration for Apple and her appreciation of iTunes as a delivery model for her music, objected to the advent of a free 3 month trial for the new Apple Music service which would see artists and producers not being compensated for the use of their music.
In an open letter to Apple posted on Tumblr, Swift complained:
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. I find it to be shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company.
She added:
I realize that Apple is working towards a goal of paid streaming. I think that is beautiful progress. We know how astronomically successful Apple has been and we know that this incredible company has the money to pay artists, writers and producers for the 3 month trial period… even if it is free for the fans trying it out.
Three months is a long time to go unpaid, and it is unfair to ask anyone to work for nothing.
Now, Swift has form here. She pulled her entire catalogue from Spotify last November and has refused to offer her album 1989 on streaming services, saying they had "shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically”. (She still managed to sell 4.9 million copies in the US alone.)
But this isn’t all about Swift's own income and career, she emphasised:
This is about the new artist or band that has just released their first single and will not be paid for its success. This is about the young songwriter who just got his or her first cut and thought that the royalties from that would get them out of debt. This is about the producer who works tirelessly to innovate and create, just like the innovators and creators at Apple are pioneering in their field…but will not get paid for a quarter of a year’s worth of plays on his or her songs.
These are not the complaints of a spoiled, petulant child. These are the echoed sentiments of every artist, writer and producer in my social circles who are afraid to speak up publicly because we admire and respect Apple so much. We simply do not respect this particular call.
Swift closed with a blunt and pretty unarguable point:
We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.
Apple surrenders
While Apple has hammered out deals with Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music, there had already been complaints from various indie labels about the free trial situation earlier in the week. Apple could probably have ridden that out, but with Apple Music set to launch next week, Swift’s intervention looked set to be a PR nightmare.
So as Swift’s letter went viral, Apple’s capitiulation came via Twitter from Eddy Cue, the company’s senior vice president of internet software and services:
My take
A powerful example of the power of social media - if you’re Taylor Swift!
While the use of Twitter as a ‘shaming’ tool has been widely promoted by customer experience gurus for many years now, it’s never quite worked as well as the theory goes.
Personally I’ve had cases where I’ve made a complaint on Twitter, but the resulting response hasn’t been as successful as the theorists would have it. For example, I’ve had numerous run-ins with telco BT over its appalling broadband customer service. Post a complaint to the ironically named BTCares and you will get a swift response which at first sight seems impressive.
But it’s a response which tries to get you off Twitter ASAP and into a private conversation out of the public gaze and which does nothing - or has done nothing for me to date - to solve your problem. Neither I might add have the private conversations that follow! But then I'm not Taylor Swift.
But anyway, full marks to Apple for pragmatism in recognizing a hellish PR sideshow emerging on the eve of its big launch and responding with what is effectively a near total climbdown. It’s a big decision as these free trial periods are typically needed to lure customers into becoming paying subscribers to a new service, as Spotify will testify.
But when you’re Apple, you’ve got an installed iTunes customer base and $200 billion in cash in the bank, maybe you can run it as a loss leader and soak up the goodwill in the process.