Apple To Taylor Swift: Shake It Off, We'll Pay The Royalties

After a big push-back from the music industry over its policies relating to the three-month free trial period of its new streaming music service, Apple Inc. AAPL has apparently had a change of heart.

Following an open letter penned by music superstar Taylor Swift voicing her opposition to Apple’s policies, Apple senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, Eddy Cue, posted a series of Tweets late last night stating that Apple now intends to pay artists during Apple Music’s free trial period.

See Also: Taylor Swift Stands Up To Apple

The Issue

Apple eventually intends to share revenue from Apple, Music with record labels, and has even indicated a more generous deal for labels than the industry standards set by rivals such as Spotify and Pandora Media Inc P. This deal means that artists can expect to get a large percentage of the $10 monthly subscription fee that Apple Music customers will pay for the service.

However, the source of the dispute is Apple’s three-month free trial period during which the service will be generating no subscription revenue. Apple had previously indicated that it had no intention of paying record labels for use of their music libraries during this time.

Swift’s Impact

Many music industry insiders voiced their opposition to Apple’s policy, but Swift’s star power was enough to get the attention of Tim Cook himself.

“We don’t ask you for free iPhones,” Swift wrote in her letter, “Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation.”

Following the publication of Swift’s letter, Cue met with Tim Cook to discuss the policy, a conversation which ultimately led to a change of heart.

“It’s something we worked on together,” Cue said of his meeting with Cook. “Ultimately we both wanted to make the change.”

The Terms

According to Cue’s Sunday night tweets, Apple “will pay artists for streaming, even during customer’s free trial period.”

Re/code is reporting that Apple intends to pay rights holders on a per-stream basis during the trial period, but it has not disclosed the rate of payment.

It remains to be seen whether Apple’s new terms will be enough to get the music industry fully on board when it comes to Apple Music.