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Swift to release concert tour exclusively on Apple Music

Where Taylor Swift was once feuding with the technology company and music subscription service over the distribution of royalties to artists during Apple Music’s free trial period, she is now in an exclusive partnership with the company, in one of the strangest turnarounds in pop culture and technology this year. It looks like the singer is planning to end 2015 as strongly as she began it – the concert film comes after Swift took Apple Music to task for not paying their artists when the service first became available. The The 1989 World Tour Live film is expected to debut on the 20th of December, 2015.

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Apple confirmed on Monday the full list of musical and special guests featured will include Ellen Degeneres, Cara Delevingne, Lily Donaldson, Lena Dunham, Gigi Hadid as well as Lorde, The Weeknd, Keith Urban, John Legend and heaps more. Fans who don’t already have an active Apple Music account can visit apple.com/music to sign up for a three month free trial today. In other words, if you are a subscriber to an alternative service like Spotify or Groove Music, you will not be able to hear or see it. While this is arguably a wise business decision for Apple, it is a poor situation for both streaming music consumers and Taylor Swift fans alike. I wondered what it would be like to perform for 70,000 people.

The film will feature one leg of the world tour at ANZ Stadium in Sydney, Australia, which took place on November 28th.

“And then I was struck with this overwhelming sense of fear”.

As for Swift, there has been nothing else said by the singer since her social media posts confirming the deal, but it is expected that a significant amount of money has been transferred to her and her music reps, Universal Music Group and her label, Big Machine. The American pop superstar gave her fans a special surprise on her birthday. “I am on my fifth album and can support myself, my band, crew, and entire management team by playing live shows”, she stated. “Am I going to wake up tomorrow and all of my music will be off of iTunes?” she said.

“It happens different ways different times”, she said of the guests.

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Taylor’s best pal Selena Gomez posted a black-and-white picture of them together.

Hugo Hu  LP5 via Getty Images