It’s hard to look at any music news without seeing Taylor Swift in the headlines. Some of the biggest news involving her recently was how she pulled all her music off Spotify. Many artists claim sites like Spotify are devaluing music, and those same artists often declare U2 did the same with their controversial album release, even though Bono defends it. Many claim Spotify isn’t paying the artists fairly, but Spotify’s chief executive Daniel Ek constructed a blog post stating big artists like Swift “are on track to exceed $6 million a year.” To think, Taylor could’ve had that if she let her music on Spotify, but the question has to be raised: would her CD sales have been lower?
Ek continued to defend Spotify and claim it was sites like Spotify that fight piracy. “We started Spotify because we love music and piracy was killing it.”
He goes on to say:
You can’t look at Spotify in isolation – even though Taylor can pull her music off Spotify (where we license and pay for every song we’ve ever played), her songs are all over services and sites like YouTube and Soundcloud, where people can listen all they want for free. To say nothing of the fans who will just turn back to pirate services like Grooveshark. And sure enough, if you looked at the top spot on The Pirate Bay last week, there was 1989…
What are your thoughts on Taylor Swift pulling her music from Spotify? Is she losing out on a lot of money, or is her statement more important?
Make sure you check out our article on the ups and down of making an album.
And also check out this awesome “Don’t Worry Be Happy” mashup with Pharrell’s “Happy”
