Seems like there’s no more bad blood between Taylor Swift and streaming services. To celebrate her album 1989 selling over 10 million albums and earning the Recording Industry Association of America’s “100 Million Song” certification, Swift’s management team announced on social media Thursday evening that she’s making her full catalog available on all streaming services starting at midnight on June 8.
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— Taylor Nation (@taylornation13) June 8, 2017
Taylor Swift’s History With Streaming
Swift is ubiquitously known to having a love/hate relationship with streaming services. Back in 2014, the singer yanked her albums from Spotify because her music was available on its ad-supported free tier. Swift defended her decision in an interview with Yahoo! Music, complaining that streaming services like Spotify didn’t compensate artists fairly.
“If I had streamed the new album, it’s impossible to try to speculate what would have happened,” Swift said. “But 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.”
In response, Spotify struck deals to pay lower royalties to some labels in exchange for delaying top album releases from appearing on its free tier for two weeks.
Apple Music felt Swifts wrath next. The service offers a free three-month trial for its service, but initially refused to pay royalties to artists during these trials. Swift believed it would force musicians to lose money for Apple’s marketing benefit. Apple eventually relented, and began paying artists royalties. Swift later rewarded Apple Music with exclusive content and rights to stream her music.
Now Swift is embracing Spotify, Amazon Music Unlimited, Amazon Prime Music, Tidal, Pandora Premium, and more. It’s obviously a response to the rising popularity of streaming services. Streaming services aren’t going away anytime soon. They are a vital key to make money.
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