Billy Corgan Returns To CNBC To Talk Taylor Swift And Apple

Billy Corgan Returns To CNBC To Talk Taylor Swift And Apple

Last month, Smashing Pumpkins frontman and frequent talking head Billy Corgan showed up on CNBC to discuss Tidal, call out the “feckless idiots” of the music industry, and predict that everything will change drastically once artists figure out their true value. Yesterday, he appeared on CNBC again — they should probably just give him his own show at this point? — and he touched on a lot of the same themes, this time in relation to Apple Music instead of Tidal: “Apple is making the same mistake Tidal made,” he says.

Apple backtracked on their plan to not pay artists during their three-month free trial period after Taylor Swift withheld her album 1989 and took them to task in an open letter. This is what Corgan has to say about that: “I applaud her for taking a stand, but this is going to be played out by the media as ‘Taylor versus Apple,’ and that’s not the real story. The real story is the 10,000 other artists that Apple doesn’t pay attention to past their top 12.”

And according to Corgan, that story is just beginning: “Once artists understand the power they have in this marketplace, all heck’s going to break loose,” he added. “This is a big admission on Apple’s part that they’re afraid of the negative tide that could be beginning, so they want to nip it in the bud. We’re not being paid commensurate to our value to Apple, Spotify or to anybody. Once the artists wake up, there’s going to be a bloody turf war, and this is a very big sign of what I’ve been predicting.”

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