Nielsen Weighs in on Taylor Swift-Streaming Music Dispute

Taylor Swift

In a recent study by media research firm The Nielsen Co., the company seeks an answer to the question, “What is the impact on fans of not having music available for streaming.” The corollary to that, according to Paul Ausick at 24/7 Wall Street,  is what do fans do when they can’t find their favorite artists’ music on a streaming platform.

Nielsen’s answer is, “It depends.” And the two most important variables are the kind of consumer and their spending preferences. Nielsen said:

[T]hose who spend the most money on digital music are, unsurprisingly, the most likely to purchase music unavailable to stream. Similarly, those who pay for streaming services are also more likely to buy the album (14%) than free-streamers (6%), who are far more likely to find a way to get the music for free elsewhere. On the whole, fans willing to purchase music missing from online services are more likely to buy just one or two songs from the album rather than the entire track list.

Taylor Swift pulled her new music and essentially all of her back catalog from free streaming services like Spotify because she believes that the music has value and that listeners should pay for it, not expect it for free.

A Nielsen chart-by-age group shows how consumers react to being unable to find the music they want from a streaming service. More than half will either find something else to listen to or wait until the music is available from a streaming service. For Taylor Swift this means that she has chosen both not to be heard and not to get paid by 51% of consumers. That percentage rises to 61% of consumers less than 18 years of age.