uthinki Considered Opinion?
Like any good peddler of a potentially addictive substance, Apple wants people hooked on the products it’s pushing. And the number one rule of hustling is to create your own demand. In Apple’s case, it’s giving people three months of free samples, make that a three month free trial of the Apple Music streaming service. Normally this would cost $9.99 per month, but:
“Come on. Try it. It’s free. Try it. Just once…”
Problem was, since it’s giving this away, it didn’t want to pay the artists or record labels for streaming their music either.
Naturally a hustler can’t annoy its own supplier.
Enter Taylor Swift’s blog entry To Apple, Love Taylor and problem solved. Apple will now be forking out the cash to the owners of the music during the free trial period.
Taylor Swift, is there anything she can’t do?
Before such a question warrants a reply, here’s an unreal 10 reasons why Taylor Swift got royalties out of Apple when no-one else could:
- Taylor Swift took out the number one spot in Maxim’s Hot 100 list in 2015. Which, by Apple’s reckoning was enough to make more than a few heads pop out of their turtle necks.
- In an age where too many women have cankles worthy of a herd of elephants and legs that are better suited to holding up rustic rough-cut wooden furniture than females, even if hidden by boots and wedges, Taylor Swift has bucked that trend. Real shapely legs. With defined ankles, calves, knees and thighs. Whether Taylor Swift’s legs are actually worth the $40 million they’re supposedly insured for is another matter entirely.
- When she wrote the words “To Apple, Love Taylor” Apple thought it was in a romantic relationship her. Beyond which, fearing the breakup, Apple didn’t want Taylor subsequently writing a snarky song about it.
- Tay-Tay rhymes with pay-pay. Lyrics that good practically write themselves. Apple plans that people will be streaming that sort of quality all day long.
- It allowed Apple to stop the plans of other competing music streaming services potentially involving Taylor Swift such as Spotify’s Swiftify and TIDAL’s Taydal.
- Much like Swift wrote of an apparent giant travelling and interacting with very small people, Apple can also relate to this. Sure they’re different Swifts, but who’s going to know?
- Following the success of Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl commercial, attempting to repeat it 31 years later with 1989 somehow makes sense. If both Big Brother and Big Sister say so, it’s probably better left unquestioned. Or left well enough alone, because some numbers are more equal than others.
- Apple is planning a new device called iSwft. No doubt it’s either something different in a name for an Apple product, or just a typo. The song Shake It Off was actually test marketing. Suggesting it was backdoor pilot may imply too much. This device is rumoured to have motion control, and will be even more maligned than the dreaded waggle of the nunchuck with Nintendo’s Wii.
- As a big fan of touchscreen, Apple wants everyone to know that it’s all about the capacitive touchscreen. Contact with the skin. None of that resistive touchscreen and stylus stuff for this company. What that has to do with Taylor Swift may be unclear. However, any company that houses its stores in a giant glass cubes must have something up the collective sleave of its skivvy. Possibly it’s about a song called Feeling Myself on a rival music streaming service. Think about it. Rearrange a few letters and alter as required, then it all becomes relevant: Feeling My Swift. Which could be reference to a new app from Apple which somehow streams Taylor Swift perfume. If that sounds reasonable, time to reach for the tinfoil hat before any more great ideas are stolen…
