The boss of leading music streaming service Spotify has hit back at Taylor Swift’s decision to remove her songs from the site, claiming fans will just listen to her music for free elsewhere.
Her entire catalogue was pulled last week at her request, just as she released a new album called 1989, which went on to top the UK album charts.
Daniel Ek, the CEO and founder of Spotify, has now written a blog to defend the company’s payments to artists after suggestions that it was not fairly rewarding them for their work.
Although Swift has not explained the decision, many have speculated that it was to help focus interest on driving album sales around the release date, rather than allowing them to be heard for free.
We’re not just streaming, we’re mainstreaming now
Ek said: “She sold more than 1.2 million copies of 1989 in the US in its first week, and that’s awesome. We hope she sells a lot more because she’s an exceptional artist producing great music.
“But she’s the only artist who has sold more than a million copies in an album’s first week since 2002. In the old days, multiple artists sold multiple millions every year. That just doesn’t happen anymore; people’s listening habits have changed − and they’re not going to change back.”
He went on to suggest that Spotify had been unfairly targeted because Swift’s music was still available for free on other sites, including pirates from which she made nothing.
Ek blogged: “You can’t look at Spotify in isolation, even though Taylor can pull her music off Spotify (where we license and pay for every song we’ve ever played), her songs are all over services and sites like YouTube and Soundcloud, where people can listen all they want for free.
“To say nothing of the fans who will just turn back to pirate services like Grooveshark. And sure enough, if you looked at the top spot on The Pirate Bay last week, there was 1989...”
He also insisted that Spotify was a good thing for artists.
He wrote: “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.
“Here’s the thing I really want artists to understand: Our interests are totally aligned with yours. Even if you don’t believe that’s our goal, look at our business. 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.”