Swift Removal from Spotify

Alongside releasing an album set to break the biggest first week sales records since 2002 with over 1m sales, Taylor Swift has removed all of her music from Spotify.

New album ‘1989’ was not added to the streaming platform upon release and Swift’s label Big Machine Label Group subsequently removed all back catalogue releases including mega selling Number One album Red.

Spotify responded with a rather emotive blog post stating: “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. That’s why we pay nearly 70% of our revenue back to the music community”.

Alongside some obvious punning around song titles, the post also states that almost 16 million Spotify users have played Taylor Swift tracks in the last 30 days and that the singer features on more than 19 million playlists.

The plot thickened as it emerged that Big Machine Founder Scott Borchetta is reportedly shopping around for a buyer for the label, with a price tag north of $200m – though if the aim of leaving Spotify was to increase the value of the recordings to a potential buyer then Big Machine should surely also be looking at a certain video streaming platform.

Speaking of Swift (and industry press has done little else in recent days), this article by outgoing Music Week Editor Tim Ingham is well worth a read- A swift lesson in the dangers of music biz egotism.