News June 9, 2017

Taylor Swift’s catalogue is now on Spotify, and look how she’s spun the news

“I think there should be an inherent value placed on art.”

This is what Taylor Swift told Time magazine in November 2014, when being queried on why she decided to remove her music from the service.

I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify. Everybody’s complaining about how music sales are shrinking, but nobody’s changing the way they’re doing things. They keep running towards streaming, which is, for the most part, what has been shrinking the numbers of paid album sales.”

So Taylor changed how she did it, and pulled her music from the streaming service, shortly after penning an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal about this decision.

But three years is an eternity in the music industry nowadays, and it seems Swift has finally relented and allowed her music to be available on all streaming services, including Spotify’s ad-supported tier, which was the crux of her initial gripes. Spotify’s #1 holdout has buckled.

She has shaped it publicly as — if not a victory — then a gift to her loyal fans. “In celebration of 1989 selling over ten million albums worldwide, and the RIAA’s 100 Million Song Certification announcement, Taylor wants to thank her fans by making her entire back catalog available to all streaming services tonight at midnight”, she announced on Twitter.

Presumably such altruism isn’t the actual reason. There are some who see the move’s timing as significant, and petty; the release coincides with Katy Perry’s midnight album drop, with whom she has been feuding in recent times. The truth is probably a combination of how Spotify access can often turn a casual fan into a diehard, ticket-buying one, and the marketing possibilities when teaming with one of the music world’s biggest and most forward-thinking players.

Taylor has finally seen the inherent value – of Spotify.