Swift: Spotify is 'an experiment' I'm not helping
Industry analysts cautioned that even Taylor Swift couldn't go platinum anymore, thanks to early leaks and streaming services like Spotify, which lets users "save" as many songs as they'd like to playlists once they've coughed up a $9.99 monthly fee.
Swift ended up selling a whopping 1.287 million copies of 1989 in its first week. And on Tuesday she went a step further, yanking her entire catalog off Spotify, causing the service to panic and issue mea culpas on social media for the star to come back.
"We were young when we first saw you but now there's 40MM who say stay, stay, stay," pleaded Spotify on Twitter.
At the time, her single Shake It Off was the service's most-played track.
The reason behind Swift's streaming strike? Compensation, baby.
The numbers are stark. Spotify pays artists an average of "between $0.006 and $0.0084" per stream, according to the service's website. Swift is selling a deluxe edition of 1989 — with bonus tracks — exclusively at Target for $13.99.
"Days ago, she'd already sold 247,000 copies there for a gross of $3,455,530," New Yorkmagazine's Dan Reilly writes, doing the math. "If there were that many streams for all of 1989's 13 tracks at Spotify's highest payout rate, she'd get $26,972.40. Pocket-change."
Spotify has said it pays nearly 70% of its revenue back to the music community. Swift sat down with Yahoo Music on Thursday, and addressed her issues with Spotify head-on.
"All I can say is that music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment," she said. "And I'm not willing to contribute my life's work to an experiment that I don't feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music. I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free."
Sorry, Spotify. It sounds like you and your top artist are never, ever getting back together.