By Samantha Sidi ’16, Arts and Entertainment Editor

Taylor Swift sparked a conversation about the effects of streaming music through Spotify when refusing to release her newest album, 1989, through the music application. In her interview with Time Magazine, Taylor said, “I think there should be an inherent value placed on art.” She added, “I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify.” She believes that her opinions on the way she should share her music were ignored with Spotify:”they don’t have any settings, or any kind of qualifications for who gets what music.”[1]

However, Taylor still allowed her music to be released on YouTube, and without the presence of Spotify, her views doubled. Her popular song “Shake it Off” had a noticeable increase in views by 120%. Another crucial statistic that points to the success of this maneuver was the sales in copies of the album, with 1.3 million sold in the first week, the best debut by a female artist since Britney Spears in 2000. Taylor’s album 1989 has sold over 2 million copies in the first three weeks and remains on the top of Billboard charts and iTunes.[2]

Despite these glaring statistics justifying Taylor’s decision, artists have spoken out about the matter. In particular, Adam Levine stated, “Music is for everyone. I don’t care how anybody obtains it as long as they get it and enjoy and love it.” He added that as long as the consumer is “supporting the artist in some way,” they should be able to access music how they choose. “Music should be able to be wherever it is,” he said. “That’s how I feel.”[3]

Spotify’s mission has a similar theme to Levine’s philosophy, and that is to give people access to music in a legal and convenient way. The company’s stated, “We love Taylor Swift, and our more than 40 million users love her even more—nearly 16 million of them have played her songs in the last 30 days, and she’s on over 19 million playlists.” Spotify predicted that Taylor would have received 6 million dollars if she had kept her album on the streaming service.[4]

The question that then arises is, how does Spotify pay artists? Spotify collects a certain amount per month, takes its own cut, and then divvies up the remaining to the record label, who then decides how much to pay to their artist. Therefore, if more users were on Spotify, the artists would make more money. It is reasonable to conclude that if Taylor Swift promoted Spotify then she herself would make more money from it; however, she still asserts that money is not her issue with the company.

This controversy does affect small-scale artists by prompting users to stop using the service and instead listen to music through the other alternatives, mainly YouTube. The implications of Taylor Swift’s stance on Spotify allow other music streaming services to become more prominent, and it limits small-scale artists’ options in sharing their music.

Despite the issues with Spotify, Newark Academy students who use the service have positive feedback. Lila Rimalovski ’15 believes that she can “discover new music through Spotify” that she traditionally could not through iTunes because of her varying tastes in music. Additionally, Aman Patil ’17 stated, “through Spotify I can listen to any music or playlists that I want.” With these positive reactions to Spotify, the Newark Academy community’s beliefs demonstrate the positive aspects of Spotify by choosing to focus on Spotify’s purpose of sharing music with its users.

[1] http://www.buzzfeed.com/reggieugwu/spotify-wont-compromise-on-free-tier

[2] http://mashable.com/2014/11/20/taylor-swift-spotify-youtube/

[3] http://www.buzzfeed.com/tanyachen/adam-levine-and-blake-shelton-on-taylor-swift-spotify

[4]  https://news.spotify.com/uk/2014/11/03/taylor-swifts-decision/