There is a crisis in America and it needs to be addressed immediately.
The artistic value of music is being lost.
With file-sharing websites and applications like Spotify and Pandora, people all over the country and even the world are finding ways to listen to their favorite music without paying for it.
And it needs to stop.
Thankfully, country/pop/country-pop/hip-hop/country-hip-hop artist Taylor Swift is taking a stand against people listening to music, which is something that someone should have been done a long long time ago.
If you haven’t been informed yet of this social movement against music, T-Swizzle recently decided to leave Spotify and take all of her music with her. This caused uproar as many fans of Swift found themselves unable to stream her music on the popular streaming app, whether they pay 10 bucks a month for the premium package or not.
Tay Tay recently was the cover story of a November issue of TIME magazine. In the issue, she discussed her reasons why she decided to take all of her music off of Spotify.
“I think that people should feel that there is a value to what musicians have created, and that’s that,” Swift said.
With Taylor’s words, the problem comes to the surface.
Taylor Swift wasn’t getting enough money from her album sales and she was forced to do something about it.
“I think there should be an inherent value placed on art,” Swift explained. “I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify. Everybody’s complaining about how music sales are shrinking, but nobody’s changing the way they’re doing things.”
Nobody was changing, until Taylor did. And now, with her decision, Taylor should expect every artist to follow in her footsteps. In fact, the numbers prove that since Spotify has made almost every song ever available for streaming, artists are losing money more than they ever have before.
In a Los Angeles Times article published earlier this week, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said that the company pays out only $2 billion yearly in royalties to the artists who are featured on the streaming service. Of that $2 billion, T-Swift would have only made $6 million per year if her music remained on the app.
It’s as if the CEO wants her to live in a box.
While Swift should see a substantial increase in revenue now that she has disallowed millions of people from listening to her music, I hope she knows that her mission is not complete. It’s only just begun.
In order to ensure that Taylor Swift reaches her maximum profit, she must also take action in other places where fans may listen to her music without paying for it. This means no more YouTube and definitely no more radio. It’s all about the cash flow, and if Taylor wants to be swimming in green, she can’t approve of drivers listening to “Shake it Off” in their car without paying for it. She also, in order to ensure that people aren’t finding ways to listen to her music via YouTube, should stop making music videos entirely. You can never be too safe in this day and age and I think it is only right for Swift to proceed with caution.
Lastly, Taylor Swift plans to keep her music on iTunes, and I just don’t think that is something she can afford to do. While, yes, fans are required to pay for every song they desire to download off of iTunes, the Apple application still allows for a listener to hear a free 1:30 preview of every song. This still allows even the biggest of Taylor Swift fans to have a free way in, and once again, if Swift wants to make a living out of this, she can’t afford to have her music on iTunes either.
It’s a travesty when you think about it; an artist valuing their music being heard over the money they could be making. It’s despicable, but it’s reality, and thankfully we have Taylor Swift, a true American hero, leading the way. In fact, she has taken this stand a while ago, but somehow it has only become relevant now.
“I wrote about this in July, I wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal,” Swift told TIME. “This shouldn’t be news right now. It should have been news in July when I went out and stood up and said I’m against it. And so this is really kind of an old story.”
Thank you, Taylor. Thank you for being brave enough to take a stand against listening to music.