Apple has approached Florence and the Machine, Taylor Swift and a dozen other acts seeking exclusive streaming deals for its company Beats Music, Bloomberg reports. The move is apparently in reaction to Tidal, the streaming service Jay Z launched in March with the help of a host of popstars, and which has already hosted exclusives from Beyoncé and Rihanna.
Both platforms are out to compete with giants Youtube and Spotify, which allow you to stream music for free if you sit through their ads. Tidal's hook is that, in Alicia Keys' words, it "puts the power back in the artists' hands." But Beats, as Russ Crupnick of MusicWatch points out, already has "a whole ecosystem of devices with a loyal and rabid fan base."
Apple is approaching artists for exclusivity deals in anticipation of Beats Music being re-tooled and re-launched later this summer (along with a new app that Trent Reznor apparently has something to do with designing). Watch this space.
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