On November 3, 2014 Taylor Swift and her record label made the decision to remove all of her albums from Spotify, a universally popular music streaming service. Spotify is currently available in over 58 countries and has about 40 million users, over 10 million of those users being paying customers. Since the launch of Spotify, the service has paid $1 billion to the rights holders of the music that is streamed. Taylor Swift’s reason for removing her music is that she believes that music “should not be free.” While Spotify is a low-royalty streaming service, only paying between $0.006 and $ 0.0084 per play, that number results in millions of dollars for musicians that acquire thousands of plays, like Taylor Swift. Apparently a few extra million dollars is not enough to satisfy the singer already worth an estimated $200 million dollars as of the beginning of 2014. Swift not only says that she stands firm in her decision to pull her music off of this streaming service, but she says in a Wall Street Journal editorial that she hopes that individual artists and their labels mimic her decision. Her decision to pull her music from Spotify is more representative of her greed than her appreciation for the inherent value of music.
Swift says “…music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.” This suggests that art should not be free, which goes completely against the concept of libraries, museums, street art and many other forms of displaying art. In reference to Spotify being free, her stance is not completely valid. Spotify has a two tier system, one allowing for free music play on computers and tablets with frequent ads and interruptions, and a second tier which allows on-demand listening to any song available with no ads or interruptions. If someone is using a computer, they could also just as easily type in the name of the song on YouTube and listen for free. Spotify adds convenience and saves time, but does not commit this horrific crime of thievery that she describes.
Taylor Swift’s most recent release, “1989,” sold over 1.2 million albums during the first week, making it the first and only platinum record of 2014. Swift has continuously broken records with the amount of albums she has sold, and her sales have increased with each subsequent album, making her label CEO’s claim that streaming services are “disrespectful to the fan that wants to invest,” illegitimate as a whole.
YouTube, Pandora, Tumblr, SoundCloud and illegal downloading sites are just some of the ways to listen to music other than downloading it from iTunes or buying physical albums. People no longer purchase music because they want to listen to an artist’s new material; rather, they purchase music to show appreciation for an artist or show them respect. As a huge fan of Taylor Swift’s, I bought the deluxe version of the 1989 album the day it was available, although most of the songs would soon be placed on Tumblr by excited fans. Since music has become digital, bringing us so many options for how to listen to music, the choice to purchase music rather than find it somewhere else online has become a much more meaningful decision by the customer. Removing this album from Spotify may have some very miniscule, positive effect on Swift’s record sales, but not enough to discredit the service and certainly not enough to influence people’s overall desire to buy albums.
Streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora give people a way to listen to music they want to hear without purchasing the albums or giving in to music piracy. This is something that should be appreciated by artists who now receive another source of income, rather than shied away from because the amount of revenue is not high enough for their standards. Taylor Swift and other artists such as the Black Keys and Jason Aldean who have also made the choice to remove their albums from Spotify should reconsider how often the alternative to music streaming sites will be purchasing the album rather than finding a free download.
Lauren Horne is an Opinion Columnist for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at l.horne@cavalierdaily.com.
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