[NewsPoster]

Singer Taylor Swift has taken the unusual move of pulling her entire back catalog from Spotify, in the same week that her label launched her latest album. The move, which involves the removal of all of the artist's earlier albums, has been conducted without comment from Swift nor her management, but that has not kept Spotify from speaking out.

In a blog post, Spotify points out that close to 16 million of the service's 40 million users have played Swift's songs in the last 30 days, and that she is included on over 19 million playlists. "We hope she'll change her mind and join us in building a new music economy that works for everyone," states the blog. "We believe fans should be able to listen to music wherever and whenever they want, and that artists have the absolute right to be paid for their work and protected from piracy." The post goes on to claim the company pays "nearly 70 percent of our revenue back to the music community."

By Eva Rinaldi (Taylor Swift) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

This may be a reference to an opinion piece by Swift published in the Wall Street Journal last July. In the article, Swift suggests the album to be a valuable asset, though points the finger at services similar to Spotify for their reduced sales. "Piracy, file sharing, and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently," suggests the singer, before pointing out musical artists giving away songs in exchanges for promotions, such as that of Samsung and Jay Z.

"Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for," muses Swift. "It's my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album's price point is." Swift then warns artists not to "underestimate themselves or undervalue their art."

Spotify and other streaming services have been under fire from artists and record labels for some time, with accusations that not enough money reaches the artists. Notably, Radiohead's Thom Yorke pulled all his solo music from Spotify last year, claiming the smaller labels were paid a pittance while shareholders enjoyed revenues from subscriptions.

At the end of last year, Spotify announced it had paid out $1 billion in royalties, including $500 million for 2013 alone, with the amount making up 70 percent of overall Spotify revenues. The service highlighted that its premium subscriptions brought in $120 per year in revenue per subscriber, compared to the $55 average annual expenditure on music by the average US customer. Spotify also pointed out that independent artists kept up to 100 percent of their royalties, while those working with record labels usually end up with a far smaller percentage of their song's royalties due to the terms of the recording contract.

Update: "Privacy" corrected to read "Privacy"

[Jeronimo2000]

"We believe fans should be able to listen to music wherever and whenever they want, and that artists have the absolute right to be paid for their work and protected from privacy."

Yes, privacy is a bitch. Everyone should (and probably will) be protected from that.

[Jeronimo2000]

With regards to why Taylor Swift pulled her music: I reckon she dated someone who works for Spotify, and the pig dumped her.

[southwick]

The debate over whether her music qualifies as art will go on for years, but if she thinks she will be setting the price for her "art", she is terribly ill-informed. Long after Swift and her "art" have disappeared into obscurity, music lovers will be still playing Mozart, and wondering why, after over 200 years, he was nearly a pauper, and without patronage, he and others like him, would have starved to death. Someone needs to tell Swift that the market (listeners) sets the price for her music, and if her albums are priced where she thinks they should be, perhaps she should reconsider whether they should even be released at all.

[Teq]

Now I wonder what all the people who used to listen to Swift on Spotify are going to do... are they going to buy, or as I predict... download...?

[Jeronimo2000]

@Teq: they'll find something else, and soon. Mrs Swift might think she's unique and irreplaceable, but that sentiment might not be shared by the rest of the world.

[just a poster]

Taylor Swift knows the money is in touring, not album sales.

[Spheric Harlot]

Wow, you guys have this music thing all sussed out, don't you?

[besson3c]

Why is the focus on what you think or we should think about Swift's music? She made a statement, good on her, Spotify is not at all artist friendly.

[blshaw]

"protected from privacy"? Huh?

[shawnde]

I'm not a big fan of streaming music services ... I prefer my music to be "physically" on my iPod in offline mode .... but I'm happy that Taylor Swift has removed her catalogue from Spotify. I think she should remove her entire catalogue from iTunes, Amazon MP3, Google Play and all other outlets, so that "real" artists, who actually have studied and appreciate "art" can produce music worth listening to. Her catalogue missing from the outlets is a blessing for most, if not all of us, as it will clear up some room for better music to emerge, and we will all save a bunch of bandwiidth, which is in short supply nowadays .... this kind of 'art' is not worth the "bytes" that it is taking up on the disk or on the wire .... good riddance !!!!

[nowwhatareyoulookingat]

Spotify may pay 70% to the labels, but much of it is NOT in the form of streaming royalties, and even with millions of plays, Taylor would get paid maybe a couple hundred dollars. The label would make several orders of magnitude more money for those same plays.

[climacs]

what you think of Swift's music is not important; what she (or someone who works for her) wrote makes important points. Piracy is killing music. And no, you can't make up the money in touring. Ticketbastard has made all but small club dates expensive. Time and time again, the gatekeepers - whether record labels, agents or ticket-selling companies - skim off most of the profits and leave little for artists. It is the oldest story in the music business. Southwick, the market apparently thinks music is worth almost nothing because piracy has wrecked the business. Spouting simplistic libertarian platitudes contributes nothing to the discussion.

[Teq]

@climacs
Yeah, I'm sure she's really really struggling with that 200+ million net worth, but I'm sure the piracy is killing it for her. Honestly I think it's just that there is never enough money no matter how rich you are.

[iphonerulez]

Taylor Swift said it's not about the money. It's the principle of the matter. Huh? I think she's a sweet kid but I never listen to her music so she can pull all her songs from everywhere so no one can listen to them for all I care. I listen to music from the 50's and 60's (doo wop and rock 'n' roll and that's some really fine music. Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking her opinion. She should do whatever she pleases with her own music.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Teq 

@climacs
Yeah, I'm sure she's really really struggling with that 200+ million net worth, but I'm sure the piracy is killing it for her. Honestly I think it's just that there is never enough money no matter how rich you are.

I assure you, there are many artists that are affected profoundly by these issues whose net worth may not even top $200k.

Why is it so hard for people like yourself to understand that this issue is not about Taylor Swift and what you think about her?

[Chongo]

Back in the day I recorded tons of music off local stations onto cassettes Miss Swift writes a lot of her own songs so she gets paid royalties from OTA stations. The song writers and publishers get paid, performers who record songs written by others get squat.

[besson3c]

Your point being?

[Spheric Harlot]

There's a much more relevant point to this: a new album generates interest in the back catalogue.

The new album is, by all accounts, pretty successful, so it makes perfect business sense to remove the old catalogue from on-demand play to get people to buy it if they want to listen to it.

There is no better time to do so than now; it's a very simple, if shrewd, business move from a competent business woman.

Also, it serves to remind people of what Steve Jobs said way back in the day about subscription services: you don't own shit. Your entire music collection is at the mercy of other people's business decisions.

[Chongo]

These have been the scourge of the record industry for decades. Now they convert to MP3.
PyleHome - PT659DU - Home and Office - Digital Tuners - Speaker Selectors - Sound and Recording - Digital Tuners - Speaker Selectors

[besson3c]

Am I the only one that has a hard time connecting Chongo's musings to concrete arguments?

[Spheric Harlot]

Chongo is shooting off standardized rants based on vague topic association. They are completely irrelevant to the actual subject, though, so just ignore them.

[Chongo]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Am I the only one that has a hard time connecting Chongo's musings to concrete arguments?

People have been "stealing" music long before the digital era. Miss Swift wasn't even born when the first dual dubbing casstette players hit the market. Long before Napster and BitTorrent, there was the EVIL cassette recorder.

Home Taping Is Killing Music - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chongo 

People have been "stealing" music long before the digital era. Miss Swift wasn't even born when the first dual dubbing casstette players hit the market. Long before Napster and BitTorrent, there was the EVIL cassette recorder.

Home Taping Is Killing Music - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You are missing the point completely.

Swift is not giving a PSA about piracy, she is equating streaming to piracy, because it practically is. Have you seen info graphics like the following?



Artists receive very little benefit from having their music streamed on services via Spotify (as much as I love Spotify and use it myself), because they are not part of the discussion as to what they are paid, and all of this revenue is so abstract and indirect in comparison to selling physical copies of your music.

I think most musicians recognize that selling physical copies is not the answer either, but there needs to be some pushback against services like Spotify as well, because this current model is not acceptable to artists.

Good on Swift for taking a stand.

[besson3c]

Right now, albums are pretty much just promo pieces to get people to attend live shows. This is sad and unfortunate because an album used to be an art form in and of itself.

The album Thriller, the best selling album of all time, is a piece of art. It belongs in a time capsule of human history. The music itself is obviously art, but the whole entirety of how these tracks flow together, the complete journey of the album (including its liner notes, marketing, etc.) is probably not something we'll ever see again. Why should artists invest in making albums when there is no money to be had doing so?

[Chongo]

Terrestrial radio is the ultimate streaming service and unless you are a songwriter or publisher, artists receive nothing at all. The record labels don't get royalties either, but realize they do generate sales. This lead to the Payola scandles. With the streaming services, at least the non songwriting artist get paid something.

[besson3c]

Terrestrial radio is also dead, so I'm not sure why we are talking about it? Why should it be a model? It was relevant in a time when streaming didn't exist, and even if it was still relevant, it's owned by a select few elites in America, it is not a model worthy of emulation.

[Spheric Harlot]

People keep telling artists to see the new channels as promotion, where people get free access to discover new stuff.

That's exactly what Taylor Swift has done:

"Here, you've heard my stuff - now buy it if you want to keep listening."

Simple enough.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

People keep telling artists to see the new channels as promotion, where people get free access to discover new stuff.

That's exactly what Taylor Swift has done:

"Here, you've heard my stuff - now buy it if you want to keep listening."

Simple enough.

Exactly. Spheric and I could probably name hundreds of smaller musicians and bands you've never heard of, but none of them have the platform to take a stand like this in a way that will garner enough attention to matter. Most artists with big platforms these days will not survive a universal litmus test as being a "worthy artist" to take a stand like this without people like a number of people in this thread informing us all that that artist sucks.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Chongo 

Terrestrial radio is the ultimate streaming service and unless you are a songwriter or publisher, artists receive nothing at all. The record labels don't get royalties either, but realize they do generate sales. This lead to the Payola scandles. With the streaming services, at least the non songwriting artist get paid something.

No, they don't. That's the point. Revenue of $1,100 against FOUR MILLION plays is close enough to "nothing" to be statistically irrelevant. If you're in a position where you're getting four million plays a month on Spotify, your staff's phone bill alone is already going to top that several times over.

There's a pretty huge chasm between incentive and insult.

And the profit made by Spotify itself...which, incidentally, is majority-owned by...the labels! Hooray!

[Chongo]

This is from last year. Some serious money. The Time article says artists also get paid

Spotify Reveals Royalty Rates Paid to Artists | TIME.com

Some back-of-the-napkin math using Spotify’s listenership data and these royalty figures provides a sense for how much money the hottest songs in music are making for artists and labels right now. Here are the 10 most popular songs on Spotify the week before Thanksgiving, with an estimate of how much money they’ve generated in royalties since they were released:

1. The Monster / Eminem / 35.1 million streams / $210,000 – $294,000

2. Timber / Pitbull / 32.0 million streams / $192,000 – $269,000

3. Lorde / Royals / 65.3 million streams / $392,000 – $549,000

4. OneRepublic / Counting Stars / 57.7 million streams / $346,000 – $484,000

5. Avicii / Hey Brother / 46.5 million streams / $279,000 – $391,000

6. Miley Cyrus / Wrecking Ball / 60.4 million streams / $363,000 – $508,000

7. Katy Perry / Roar / 64.6 million streams / $388,000 – $543,000

8. Avicii / Wake Me Up / 152.1 million streams / $913,000 – $1.3 million

9. Drake / Hold On, We’re Going Home /47.1 million streams / $283,000 – $396,000

10. Ellie Goulding / Burn / 53.8 million streams / $323,000 – $452,000

Note that these are the total royalty payments split between record labels, music publishers, songwriters and artists. It’s not clear exactly how much money goes to artists, but in older distribution formats, like CDs and iTunes downloads, artists often pocketed less than 10 percent of the retail price.

The picture is obviously not as rosy as these numbers would indicate for smaller acts. Spotify says a band with a “niche indie album” generated $3,300 in royalty payments in July, while a classic rock album earned $17,000.

The disclosures may help Spotify convince more acts to put their music on the service. But the company, which is not profitable, faces an ever-growing number of music streaming competitors, soon to include YouTube. Spotify may generate big dollars for artists one day, but it will have to convince a fractured listening audience that its platform is worth paying for.

Times have changed since this happened.
CNN - Public Enemy downloads challenge to industry - May 6, 1999

[makemineamac]

1 weeks of album sales - almost 1.2 million albums - shows that Taylor Swift yet again, knows what's going on. Good for her. I love seeing this young person innovate and succeed. You may not like her or her music, but her and her team continue to keep things going in the right direction, while encouraging others in the industry to make bold moves - like pulling her music from Spotify. Love it.

[Mike Wuerthele]

If she wants to do this, good for her. This has little effect on most streamers, and won't hurt them at all. Who it hurts is 10-year-old Becky in the middle of the country, who's parents can afford a streaming subscription on the lone family PC, but can't afford to buy multiple albums every month. She either will go without, or pirate the music.

This is anti-fan. This is anti-music. She can try to set the tone for what should be paid for music -- we'll see how it goes.

[besson3c]

This is also not just about Taylor Swift, but about the entire industry. Yes, any artist with the popularity of those in Chongo's top 10 list is going to make money on any system at that scale. But what about the non-megastars? Does streaming hurt artistic efforts (which are not always tied to popularity)?

Even if you don't think you give a rat's ass about art, you benefit from artistic experimentation. The first time auto tune was recorded, it didn't blow up like it is today. What should the the up-and-coming and/or artsy fartsy sorts of musicians/bands do if they can't make money doing what they do? The Spotify economic model is designed to work best on very large scales, at the lower scales artists need ways to maximize their revenue.

This conversation should not just be about artists that are getting tens of hundreds of millions of streams when they release stuff, but about the entire spectrum.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Mike Wuerthele 

If she wants to do this, good for her. This has little effect on most streamers, and won't hurt them at all. Who it hurts is 10-year-old Becky in the middle of the country, who's parents can afford a streaming subscription on the lone family PC, but can't afford to buy multiple albums every month. She either will go without, or pirate the music.

This is anti-fan. This is anti-music. She can try to set the tone for what should be paid for music -- we'll see how it goes.

This is a stupid argument, and this argument is anti-music.

If Becky can afford a $10 Spotify subscription, she can afford to plunk down $10-15 every now and then for an album she likes. Chances are Becky spends more than $10-15/month on things she can live without. If $10-15 is too rich for her blood, then Becky doesn't value the music this highly, and that's fine, but this is not "anti-fan". Musicians don't owe fans charity, just like your plumber doesn't owe you fixing the water in your house for next to nothing.

Why is it that we are happy to spend more than $10-15/month on Starbucks but not on music?

[Mike Wuerthele]

Streaming is hardly charity. Swift is making a business decision, as does the plumber (who's services are far more vital than Swift's) to charge what he does.

Like I said, we'll see how it goes.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Mike Wuerthele 

If she wants to do this, good for her. This has little effect on most streamers, and won't hurt them at all. Who it hurts is 10-year-old Becky in the middle of the country, who's parents can afford a streaming subscription on the lone family PC, but can't afford to buy multiple albums every month. She either will go without, or pirate the music.

This is anti-fan. This is anti-music. She can try to set the tone for what should be paid for music -- we'll see how it goes.

Does anybody remember how people used to own like ten records, maybe twenty, and listen to FM radio?

You're not a "FAN" of forty thousand artists.

If you like something enough to want selective access to it, deal with the fact that it won't be free.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Mike Wuerthele 

Streaming is hardly charity.

When getting six million plays is $110, then either you're getting massive promotional benefits, or allowing your music to be streamed is better written off as charity.

If streaming a track one hundred and eighty MILLION times nets you a total of $12,000 dollars in royalties, then yes, that amounts to charity.

Streaming may be the future of the music business, but without a little more of the business side, the music simply ain't gonna be happening for much longer.