Taylor Swift Exits Streaming Services with Casual Insult - The UpStream

Taylor Swift Exits Streaming Services with Casual Insult

posted Sunday Nov 9, 2014 by Scott Ertz

Taylor Swift Exits Streaming Services with Casual Insult

I personally do not know much about Taylor Swift. In fact, the only two things I know about her is that her eyes appear to have been stolen from another person's face and that she is apparently terrible at relationships and enjoys telling the world about her disasters. Her relationship woes seem to extend to reality, as this week she limited the reach of her music heavily, pulling all wholly owned tracks from streaming services, including Spotify and Xbox Music (pictured here).

Upon exiting, she said,

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. 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. And I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free.

It is definitely an interesting world view that paying for music perpetuates "the perception that music has no value and should be free." Personally, the reason I use services like Xbox Music personally is because I specifically DO NOT believe music has no value; if I did, I would use a free service to steal the music.

The decision to pull music from paid streaming services has confused and disappointed both consumers and services alike. A quick search of Twitter hashtag #justsayyes shows just how disappointed customers are with the decision. Spotify, one of the affected services, went so far as to create a playlist to encourage her back, with song titles reading: "Hey Taylor We Wanted To Play Your Amazing Love Songs And They're Not Here Right Now," which is a clever use of their own playlist capabilities.

The most interesting thing to come from this is the responses from artists, who generally agree that the move was a mistake, which is a sentiment I agree with. It is possible that after initial sales of her new album slow she might change her stance, but Swift does not seem to be the type to learn from past mistakes.

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