Spotify Responds to Taylor Swift After She Pulled Out Her Music

Spotify has hit back at Taylor Swift for removing her songs from the site. Founder Daniel Ek denied the 24-year-old chart-topper’s claim that the people who work with her music aren’t properly compensated by the music streaming site.

In a move that shocked her fans and the music industry, Swift has pulled out all her songs from Spotify earlier this month. She explained to Yahoo that she tried to be open-minded about putting her music on the Web site, but it “didn’t feel right”; hence, she pulled all of her songs out.

“...[Spotify] 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,” she explained. “Also, a lot of people were suggesting to me that I try putting new music on Spotify with ‘Shake It Off,’ and so I was open-minded about it. I thought, ‘I will try this; I’ll see how it feels.’ It didn’t feel right to me.

“I felt like saying to my fans, ‘If you create music someday, if you create a painting someday, someone can just walk into a museum, take it off the wall, rip off a corner off it, and it’s theirs now and they don’t have to pay for it.’”

While Spotify agrees with Swift that artists deserve to be paid for their music, Ek denies that the site doesn’t pay them. In a lengthy blog post, he refutes myths surrounding the streaming of music on Spotify, saying that it has paid U$2 billion to labels, publishers and collecting societing for distribution to songwriters and artists since it was launched in 2008.

“Taylor Swift is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it. We started Spotify because we love music and piracy was killing it. So all the talk swirling around lately about how Spotify is making money on the backs of artists upsets me big time. Our whole reason for existence is to help fans find music and help artists connect with fans through a platform that protects them from piracy and pays them for their amazing work,” Ek wrote.

Instead of making Spotify the villain, Swift should be targeting piracy. Ek has enumerated three myths surrounding the operation of the site, namely 1) they don’t pay artists, 2) or if it does, Spotify pays them so little per play, and 3) the site hurts sales, both download and physical. He reiterate that Spotify helps artists rather than piracy.

“We’re getting fans to pay for music again. We’re connecting artists to fans they would never have otherwise found, and we’re paying them for every single listen. We’re not just streaming, we’re mainstreaming now, and that’s good for music makers and music lovers around the world,” he wrote.