Artists can command power, it’s a universal law. Madonna did it, Lady Gaga did it and now Taylor’s doing it too. Fine, but this time it didn’t go far enough.

While correctly arguing that all artists should be paid for their creativity and, so it seems, getting Apple to reverse a decision on not paying artists for the streaming trial period. Smaller artists still lose out in the long run.

The power law in action once again, only the top artists will make the income, the rest will scramble around the long tail.

What should have really been discussed is the value for each stream across the entire lifetime. It falls way below anything that an artist got in traditional CD sales. And while the internet has created the vast distribution network the long term payouts aren’t that great.

Taylor should have added another paragraph about the amount of money paid to artists.

Just my tuppence.