Taylor Swift Removed Her Music From Spotify

Taylor Swift Removed Her Music From Spotify

Taylor Swift removed her music from Spotify – a free music streaming service – and it goes without saying her millions of fans are upset. In a blog post Spotify wrote:

We love Taylor Swift, and our more than 40 million users love her even more – nearly 16 million of them have played her songs in the last 30 days, and she’s on over 19 million playlists.

We hope she’ll change her mind and join us in building a new music economy that works for everyone. We believe fans should be able to listen to music wherever and whenever they want, and that artists have an absolute right to be paid for their work and protected from piracy. That’s why we pay nearly 70% of our revenue back to the music community.

Taylor has been pretty clear about her thoughts on music share, claiming in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, “Piracy, file sharing, and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artists has handled this blow differently.”

The best part of this is the final note Spotify wrote in their blog post, “P.S. Taylor, we were both young when we first saw you, but now there’s more than 40 million of us who want you to stay, stay, stay. It’s a love story, baby, just say, yes.”

This can’t help but remind us of the still controversial U2 debate about giving away their album and how artists like the Black Keys and Pink Floyd aren’t big fans of that. Do you think Taylor is making the right decision? Is she making a point and other artists will follow, or is Spotify the future and all musicians need to get on-board before their own ship sinks?

And if you don’t think artists should be paid for their work, check out the Ups and Downs of making an Album. 

Also make sure you read our cover story on The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith.