There has been a lot of speculation regarding what artists will be available on Apple Music. Earlier this week, it was reported that artists signed to indie labels, like Adele and the Arctic Monkeys, had still not signed on to appear on the service. BuzzFeed now reports that Taylor Swift’s hit album ‘1989’ will not be available on Apple Music either. This doesn’t come as a huge surprise, though, seeing that ‘1989’ is currently not available from any existing streaming services like Beats and Spotify.
BuzzFeed says that both Apple and Taylor Swift’s label Big Machine Records confirmed that ‘1989’ will not be available and that Swift has no plans to make it available via any services in the near future.
Swift’s back catalog, however, will be available on Apple Music, similar to what is currently available on Beats and Tidal. The artist infamously pulled all of her content from rival service Spotify last year, saying that the service’s free tier devalued music and noting that music should be consumed as albums.
Earlier this month, we highlighted the fact that Apple Music was not going to stream the entire iTunes library of content due to label negotiations and withholdings. The Beatles was one notable exception at the time and now Swift’s ‘1989’ joins the British band.
Apple and Taylor Swift’s relationship has been good in the past, with the artist making her ‘1989’ bonus tracks available on iTunes after an exclusivity period with Target. Many saw this as the artist being willing to cooperate with Apple, but apparently that’s not as true as many would have hoped.
