She complained that Apple isn’t paying here for streaming her songs for a short time on their new streaming service. This is not costing her a lot of money- but it is getting great publicity for Apple. They must be rolling on the floor laughing!! They cannot buy this kind of publicity!
From Taylor’s letter to Apple:
This is not about me. Thankfully I am on my fifth album and can support myself, my band, crew, and entire management team by playing live shows. 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.
So….A photographer (Jason Seldon)wrote on his blog that after reading her contract for photographers on her last two tours, he deemed it “a complete rights grab.”
He wrote:
“How are you any different to Apple? If you don’t like being exploited, that’s great.. make a huge statement about it, and you’ll have my support. But how about making sure you’re not guilty of the very same tactic before you have a pop at someone else? Photographers need to earn a living as well. Like Apple, you can afford to pay for photographs so please stop forcing us to hand them over to you while you prevent us from publishing them more than once, ever.”
He is correct that Taylor is participating in a complete double standard, but as usual, like almost every photographer on the planet, he gets it completely wrong by calling it a “rights grab”
A rights grab would be if the tour personnel locked the photographers in a room, demanded their Compact Flash cards, downloaded them into a computer, wiped them clean, and then let the photographers go! This is an example of many stupid photographers who GIVE AWAY their rights because they want a picture of Taylor Swift for their portfolio. They all have a choice- they could refuse to sign her contract, hand it back, get in their cars and go home. They won’t be losing any money (other than their parking fee) and won’t have to spend any computer time editing photos that they have given away WILLINGLY.
The economics of the situation are such that a photographer loses money every time the sign one of these ridiculous contracts. But still, every time I go to a show where these contracts are presented to photographers, I see five to ten of them in the photo pit. The only way they could have gotten there is to have signed the contract!
So…My advice is rip up the contract and go home. You will save a lot of money.