Taylor Swift Pulls Her Music From Spotify

Taylor Swift (WCBS-FM photo)

All of Taylor Swift’s albums have been removed from Spotify and other streaming music services, in an escalation of the artist’s previous policy of “windowing” her new album releases.

According to The Guardian, when Swift’s new album 1989 was released on 27 October, it was not available to stream on Spotify and its rivals, following the same policy used for its predecessor Red.

As of today, though, that album and Swift’s entire back catalogue have been removed. While Swift and her label Big Machine Music have yet to comment, Spotify broke the news in a blog post.

“We hope she’ll change her mind and join us in building a new music economy that works for everyone,” said the company.

“We believe fans should be able to listen to music wherever and whenever they want, and that artists have an absolute right to be paid for their work and protected from piracy. That’s why we pay nearly 70% of our revenue back to the music community.”

Spotify added that nearly 16 million of its 40 million active users had played Swift’s songs in the last 30 days, while her tracks had been added to more than 19 million playlists on its service.

One factor in the removal is likely to have been the record-breaking first-week sales of 1989, which in the US looks like it could overtake the 1.319m copies Britney Spears’ debut sold in its first week. That would make Swift’s album the highest selling first week by a female solo artist in US history.

The removal comes days after the New York Post reported that Big Machine’s owner Scott Borchetta was looking to sell the label for more than $200m. The report claimed that Swift has only one album left on her contract with the company, but also that her family owns a stake in the business.

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