Taylor Swift is the queen of the music industry right now. Everywhere you look, Swift is creeping her way into your daily life promoting her new album. But one place you won’t see her bubbly personality is on the popular music streaming service, Spotify.
According to TIME Magazine, Swift took her albums off of Spotify because she felt that the service wasn’t valuing her music by being a free service. Although Swift would have made close to $6 million this year by having her albums on Spotify, according to TechCrunch, Swift also said she wants to help reverse the trend of decreasing music sales throughout the whole industry.
Swift has a point. Spotify allows you to stream a huge variety of albums for free with relatively few ads in between songs. With the convenience of having music available for free on their website and on their mobile app, many people are less likely to actually buy music off of iTunes or the physical CD.
When I was in elementary school, I loved my boom box. I loved collecting CDs to blast in my room or to bring in the car to play. Not only do you get good quality sound with a CD, you get something special to go along with it. You get a unique looking CD and an album cover that usually includes pictures — increasing the value of your music.
Later, iTunes began to dominate my music purchases. I would always feel guilty if I downloaded a song offline without buying it. Although I was (and still am) admittedly a goody two shoes, I always wanted to support my favorite artists.
But, everyone sins. Lately, with money rarely making an appearance in my wallet, I have begun to fall back on Spotify. Don’t get me wrong, Spotify is a great service in theory. Who doesn’t like free stuff?
At first, I used Spotify as a sort of “test drive” for new albums that had been released and seemed like something I would enjoy listening to. If there was a new album or song I thought about buying, I would stream it on Spotify first. However, this soon turned into a more permanent solution to my love of music. I stopped buying CDs and iTunes cards. New content was showing up less often in my phone’s music library.
This is the heart of the problem. People aren’t buying music anymore. Although music is arguably reaching a broader audience, that doesn’t necessarily translate into higher sales.
Swift has looks and smarts. By not releasing her new album “1989” on Spotify, the album sold more than 1.2 million copies in its first week — making it the first album to sell over a million copies in 2014, according to USA TODAY.
Before “1989,” I wasn’t really a huge fan of Swift’s music. But, this album had a profound effect on me. After previewing the songs on iTunes I kept saying to myself, “I need this album!” I went to Spotify to listen to the album in full — but was quickly disappointed to notice its absence.
I may lose my man card for doing this, but I couldn’t stand not having her new album so much that I went over to Target and bought the physical CD with the three Target-exclusive tracks.
After getting this album, I not only found my future wife but also rekindled my love for buying music.
Swift taking her albums off of Spotify was like a huge slap in the face to wake up the music industry. With high profile artists like Swift leading the way, I hope more artists follow suit in the future.
Music simply isn’t something to be rented. Music should be something that is purchased to not only support the artist, but to enjoy music in its highest quality and solidify the memories you have with specific songs. I think it’s safe to say Swift is never, ever getting back together with Spotify.
Anthony Herta is an intern at The State News. Reach him at aherta@statenews.com.
