New Taylor Swift Film Has Glitchy Debut on Apple Music The rollout of the highly anticipated 1989 World Tour Live has been fraught with issues.
By Nina Zipkin
Taylor Swift fans hoping to watch the pop singer's concert on Apple Music on Sunday were instead greeted by "Blank Space."
The superstar's concert documentary, The 1989 World Tour Live, was set to go live on Dec. 20, but the premiere of the film, which is exclusive to the Apple Music platform, wasn't as smooth as the tech giant would have liked.
Meant to be available for viewing on iPads, iPhones, iPod touch, Macs and PCs with iTunes and Apple TV, fans were met with crashes, glitchy streaming or the inability to even locate the movie. Since Sunday morning, Apple Music Help twitter account has continued to field customer-service requests from frustrated users as of this story.
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@bentisdell We'd like to look into this with you. Can you tell us where you're located? Send us a DM to get started.
— Apple Music Help (@AppleMusicHelp) December 21, 2015
@DFN_Jade We'd be happy to help you out with your playback issues. DM us which device you're using and we'll go from there.
— Apple Music Help (@AppleMusicHelp) December 21, 2015
@flynnetyth That's definitely not right. Let's look at what might be causing this. DM us with the device you're using to watch the concert.
— Apple Music Help (@AppleMusicHelp) December 21, 2015
@polly1301 Let's see what we can do to get you watching. Can you tell us the software versions your devices are running? Follow up in a DM.
— Apple Music Help (@AppleMusicHelp) December 21, 2015
Ahead of the Apple Music launch in July, Swift took to Tumblr in a post titled, "To Apple, Love Taylor," to take the company to task about how during the streaming service's three-month trial period, the artists, writers and producers in question would not be compensated.
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Likely not looking to run afoul of Swift and her sizable music industry clout (especially given how much attention was paid to the singer's decision to remove her music from Spotify in 2014) , Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet and software, tweeted to Swift that the company would change its policy.
#AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming, even during customer's free trial period
— Eddy Cue (@cue) June 22, 2015
We hear you @taylorswift13 and indie artists. Love, Apple
— Eddy Cue (@cue) June 22, 2015
Back in October, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the music streaming service had more than 15 million users, with 6.5 million paying the $9.99 monthly subscriber fee. And in December, with all forgiven between the two giant business entities -- Apple Music was the lone streaming service to offer the massive hit album 1989 to listeners -- Swift announced the streaming deal with Apple on Twitter, on her birthday earlier this month.Judging by the volume of complaints, it seems like the partnership will work out quite nicely for both parties once the technical difficulties are resolved.
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