Taylor Swift's decision to
remove her music this week from Spotify is a "big fist in the air" that other prominent artists are sure to follow, says her longtime record label president.
In the week she
sold 1.3 million copies of her new album
1989,
Swift abruptly pulled her single "Shake It Off" and all of her
previously released music from the streaming service, frustrating its 40
million users.
"We never wanted to embarrass a fan," says Scott
Borchetta, president of Big Machine Label Group, in a
radio interview with
Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx, of all people. "If this fan went and
purchased the record, CD, iTunes, wherever, and then their friends go,
'why did you pay for it? It's free on Spotify,' we're being completely
disrespectful to that superfan."
Artists from Radiohead's Thom Yorke to Talking Heads' David Byrne have been
harshly critical over
the past few years of Spotify's model, which allows fans to listen to
tens of millions of songs for free but pay $5 or $10 a month for its
premium, advertising-free service. Swift has "windowed" her last few
albums on Spotify, allowing the service to post the album a few months
after their release dates, but she changed her policy this week. "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," she
told Yahoo. "And I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free."
Borchetta echoed those remarks. "They have a very good
player. It's a good service. And they're going to just have to change
their ways on how they do business. If you're going to do an
ad-supported free service, why would anybody pay for the premium
service?" he said on the national radio show
Sixx Sense with Nikki Sixx. "It can't be endless free. Give people a 30-day trial, and then make them convert.
Music has never been free. It's always cost something and it's time to make a stand and this is the time to do it."
While Swift has made her back catalog available on
non-Spotify streaming services such as Beats Music, Rhapsody and Tidal,
her latest album remains unavailable on any of those services.
Borchetta, however, did not discuss YouTube, which has been streaming
songs from 1989 for free all week.
Spotify is not an illegal music service like the original
Napster. The Swedish company pays hundreds of millions of dollars to
license songs from all the major record labels, including Universal
Music, which distributes Swift's songs and the rest of Big Machine's
catalog. Although Spotify acknowledges artist royalties amount to
per-stream payouts between $0.006 and $0.0084, its officials say the
payments will increase as more people listen to ads and pay for premium subscriptions. -
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