Apple Music Loses Exclusive Streaming Deal With Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift is making her entire back catalog of music available across all major streaming services, bringing Apple Music's exclusive content deal with the singer to an end (via TechCrunch).

Beginning today, rival services including Spotify, Amazon Music, and Tidal will all be able to list the artist's existing discography, including Swift's album "1989", which has sold 10 million copies worldwide, it was also announced on Friday.

The move potentially marks a change in the way artists see streaming services, which have previously been criticized for underpaying content creators. With Spotify boasting 50 million paid subscribers and Apple Music now on 27 million, the sheer number of listeners appears to be making up for the decline in physical album sales.

Swift famously got into a spat with Spotify in 2014 because her music was available on the service's free ad-supported tier. The singer said at the time: "I think there should be an inherent value placed on art," contrasting it with how on "Beats Music and Rhapsody you have to pay for a premium package in order to access my albums. And that places a perception of value on what I’ve created."

At the center of the split was Spotify's refusal to let any music only appear on its paid tier and not its ad-supported tier, which led Swift to pull almost all her music from the service.

Swift later berated Apple Music, when the service initially declined to pay royalties to artists if their music was played during the free three-month trial of the service. Apple later reversed course and agreed to pay artists for the free plays, leading to better relations with Swift, who went on to become a promotional figure for the service in several ads and even an exclusive concert film.