Everyone knows by now that Taylor Swift has removed her catalogue from Spotify, but Scott Borchetta, president and CEO of Big Machine Label Group, recently spoke with Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx on his national radio show ‘Sixx Sense With Nikki Sixx’. And since the country music label is home to Taylor’s music, they obviously spoke about the big decision, and this is what Borchetta had to say:
‘Yes, for all of Taylor’s records in the streaming era, if you will, we have never put them on any free streaming services for the first 90 to 120 days. And the reason being is we never wanted to embarrass a fan. What I mean by that is, 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 who wants to invest, who believes in their favorite artist…’
First of all, am I hallucinating or Taylor Swift is still on Pandora radio? You can check the page here, the new album is there and Pandora pays even less than Spotify!! She still is on Rdio (although not the new album) so what he is talking about? Plus you can find her songs on YouTube of course, so what’s the deal with Spotify? Do people get really more from a stream on YouTube than on Spotify?
‘We never wanted to embarrass a fan’,… does he imagine we are gonna believe this? Fans are never embarrassed about free music and I have never heard anyone complaining about a song showing up on a streaming service! It is not as if Spotify was a new thing and people were suddenly surprised to find out they could stream her music for free! Spotify has been around for a little while and fans who bought Swift’s album knew about the streaming option before buying it! It seems to me they are trying very hard to find a bad excuse, nobody is complaining but only artists can complain because they are the ones not being paid a fair price. Let’s be clear, they couldn’t care less about the fans being embarrassed or not, they want to make as much money as possible and since Taylor still sells albums, it was the logical thing to do to make more money.
I am not saying she was wrong to do so, she and her people should just be honest and tell the truth, don’t try to patronize your fans and pretend to care….I just don’t understand why she is still on Pandora or other streaming services, but the more I think about this story the more I believe it is a tactic for selling more albums,…. Telling millions of Spotify users they will never hear ‘1989’ is sure to incite them buying the album!
