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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift |
No reason behind this action has been released yet, however, Swift’s label is possibly selling itself (for the hefty price of $200 million). Music industry professionals say that this is an effort to make the album scarce to drive album sales. If the album is hard to find, then people would be “more likely to cough up the $9.99 to get it on iTunes or while in line at the grocery store” (BuzzFeed, Ugwu).
Spotify went so far as to make a playlist begging Swift to change her mind—using only song titles. Below are screenshots of the company’s passive comment where Swift’s 1989 album would be on Spotify and a comment towards Swift posted in the background of her artist profile.
There are arguments for both sides- Pro-Spotify and Pro-Artist. I stand on the Pro-Spotify side. I think streaming services like Spotify are great, mostly because I don’t have to buy the whole album if I don’t want it and the artist gets royalties for each time I play a song (rather than if I downloaded it). The only downside is the ads, but I learn to live with those. I can see arguments for Pro-Artist though. I’m sure having an album on Spotify does take away from your album sales, but if you have die-hard fans, I’m sure they will buy the album anyway.
This has been a major hit for the music social media platform. If you were planning on sharing some T-Swift tunes with your bestie, you’re going to have to wait…or burn them a CD.
I think it is crazy that Taylor Swift will not let Spotify use her music. I believe it is a good way to get people to buy her album, but it also prohibits many people from listening to her music... which is normally the ultimate goal of musical artists. Many people, including myself, only use Spotify to listen to music because it is pretty pricey in itself. Therefore, I refuse to buy Taylor Swifts album.
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