Music News

Taylor Swift Pulls Her Music Catalog From Spotify

Just two days before Taylor Swift is predicted to break the first-week sales record for the year, her label, Big Machine Label Group, announced it has pulled her music catalog from Spotify.

This decision has caused the popular music streaming service to appeal to the artist and her label in a blog post on its website, an unprecedented move, Billboard reported.

Spotify has also launched a social media campaign with the hashtag #justsayyes, a quote from her 2008 single Love Story, to convince Swift and her label to reverse their decision, USA Today reported.

[quote text_size=”small” author=”– Spotify”]

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.

[/quote]

Big Machine Label Group CEO Scott Borchetta has been outspoken in his criticism of streaming services, saying in an interview with Financial Times that he has concerns about large companies licensing catalogs to “any streaming service that switches on,” saying that it devalues music.

There has already been negative blowback from Swift’s fans, many expressing anger via Twitter calling Swift greedy. 16 million of Spotify’s 40 million subscribers have played one of Swift’s songs in the last month alone, and about 19 million have Taylor Swift on their playlists, Forbes reported.

While Swift’s 1989 album, released last week, has never been streamed on Spotify, the single Shake It Off was Spotify’s most-played song when it was pulled from the service.

Swift has also been vocal about her opinion of streaming services. In a July opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal, she wrote that “piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically.”

In a statement, Spotify said it pays almost 70% of revenue back to the music industry.

Streaming services have grown 28% in the first half of 2014, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, which generates enough revenue to offset the decline of permanent, paid downloads.

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