Taylor Swift and her label Big Machine made a bold statement today by pulling all of her music from Spotify. Here’s another case of a music superstar railing against the new delivery norm, as consumers increasingly move that way, and artists and record labels complain about it.
It’s ironic that Ms. Swift has such negative feelings toward music streaming (as evidenced by her recent Wall Street Journal editorial), yet has long been a champion of social media, using Facebook and Twitter to its utmost to build her fan base. Her engagement is through the roof as she walks the walk and makes her fans feel like they’re a part of her life and she a part of theirs, which is really difficult to do with 46 million Twitter and 70 million Facebook followers. That said, if she’s really all that socially aware, she of all people should know that streaming is where the future lies, as more and more music consumers move that way every day.
Already there’s somewhat of a negative blowback from her fans, with many reacting with outrage via Twitter to label Swift as greedy. After all, a huge amount of her fan base does live there, with 16 million of the company’s 40 million subscribers having played one of her songs in the last month, and 19 million having her on their playlists. And now her music is gone, and to what end?
If I had to make a guess, I would think that the thinking behind this decision was to try to eek out every last sale of her new 1989 album as possible, and maybe there’s actually some sound reasoning behind that. The opportunity to cash in on a physical product might not be possible the next time Swift drops an album, as tastes and trends move on, so it makes sense to sell as many as possible while there’s still a market for it. Read more on Forbes.
----------------------------------
