It seems as though a war is currently being waged against free music. I recently wrote about Taylor Swift and her recent one woman stand against streaming service Spotify after she removed all of her music from the site.

At first, it seemed as though she was acting in contrast with the rest of the music industry with the exception of Björk, who also announced that she would not be making her latest album available on Spotify but now her campaign seems to be gaining more momentum.

Swift’s main problem with Spotify is that it has an ad-sponsored platform which means that listeners do not necessarily have to sign up for a subscription to listen to music through it. Swift made her opinion on this clear saying: “It’s my opinion that music should not be free.”

The latest development in the saga comes with the announcement of Apple’s upcoming streaming service which will aim to rival Spotify. Apple will be relaunching Beats which it recently acquired in a $3 billion deal and have already stated that when it is officially launched sometime in the next few months, it will not have a free option at all.

The move echoes the sentiments of many top-level music executives and it has been called into question if so called “freemium” services are financially viable in the long term.

Spotify have defended their free ad-supported model, saying that it is a great stepping stone that leads to many users becoming paying subscribers which is obviously their ultimate goal.

There are of course issues with getting rid of at least a free trial period. There hasn’t been any news as to whether there will be a free trial period of Beats when users initially sign up will be made available but if not, how are users supposed to know if they will like the service and will want to continue using it? The great thing with the Spotify platform is that it allows music fans the flexibility to be able to cancel their subscription if they need to whilst still being able to use services in a more limited capacity. The cut-throat tactic that Apple are taking may put some off before they have even begun.

Apple do of course have somewhat of an advantage over the much smaller Spotify and that is the sheer number of Apple fans that are out there and will blindly follow the brand regardless of a silly little thing like cost. Even though Spotify has much more experience in the music streaming sector, Apple has the musical behemoth that is iTunes under its belt and this means that they will be prepared for one hell of a fight with the much smaller company.