Taylor Swift has had her fair share of breakups, but none produced more public outcry than when she took down all her albums from Spotify, a free music-streaming service, Monday, Nov. 3.
Swift’s relationship with Spotify didn’t sour recently. When she released her album “Red” in 2012, the album wasn’t immediately available to it or other streaming services such as Rhapsody. Eventually, she relented and put it on Spotify months later.
Earlier this year, Swift wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal voicing her thoughts on streaming services and the future of the music industry as a whole, saying that “music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.”
Swift brings up a good point. Not everyone can make music, movies or art as well as the people whom we, as consumers, pay to see and hear (or try to get for free on the Internet). However, the argument comes up of how much people should pay for these products, as the common conception is that these artists put them together to make their fans happy. But then again, that’s pretty selfish to say as fans, isn’t it?
Swift isn’t the only one who has strong opinions against free streaming services. Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke spoke out against Spotify in an article written by The Guardian in 2013. There, Yorke calls Spotify the “last desperate fart of an old corpse” because he believes that older artists are using it as a way to keep their name out in public, a method he thinks artists shouldn’t use.
Music from way-back-when will always have that timeless quality to it, and it really is just an issue of whether or not the artist wants to still make a small profit on these songs by putting them on streaming services.
In a 2013 article by businessinsider.com, Spotify says that it pays artists a total of 0.6 cents per song play, which means that it would take around 166 plays for an artist to earn one dollar. For top-selling artists like Swift and Radiohead, that payout is microscopic compared with how much they earn from album and iTunes sales.
Perhaps the real winners from streaming services are artists who are trying to get their name out while still making a profit from their music. Granted, indie labels aren’t getting as much of a payout from Spotify as major labels are. (Majors get 18 percent, as opposed to indies’ 1 percent, according to theguardian.com). However, for an up-and-coming artist, the main concern should be name ID first and trying to make big money second.
As disappointing as it is, Taylor Swift doesn’t need to have any of her music on Spotify, along with the rest of the artists who are doing just fine selling their albums in the market. Fans usually argue that it’s selfish of her not providing her music for free, but the tables very well can be turned on fans for being selfish in thinking that the only reason she and other artists make music is for them.
Sophomore communication studies major Micayla Brewster supports Swift in her decision to remove her music from Spotify.
“I don’t use Spotify. I just buy my own music because I like the feeling of owning it and knowing that I paid for it,” Brewster said. “I think it’s her decision and it’s her music so she can do what she wants with it. Just buy the music.”