Taylor Swift to Spotify: Blank Space or blank check?
Loving Spotify was like keeping artists in the red.
And losing Spotify wasn't blue.
That's according to those in Taylor Swift's camp who are calling out the music streaming service for paying out much less to artists than it claims.
Swift was in the last year for domestic streaming, Scott Borchetta, CEO of Swift's label Big Machine, told TIME magazine, putting her actual return drastically lower than what Spotify has suggested.
Borchetta's statements came a day after Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in a blog post an artist of Swift's caliber could have expected to receive .
A Spotify spokesperson said the service had paid a total of $2 million for Swift鈥檚 streaming globally in the past 12 months.
Numbers aside, Swift has made it clear her move to pull her entire catalog from Spotify is a matter of principle.
鈥淭hese streaming sites pay nano-pennies to musicians,鈥� John Covach, popular music historian director of the Institute for Popular Music at the University of Rochester in New York and popular music historian, told the Monitor.
Anyone who is under the impression that streaming services such as Spotify, which pay royalties to the artists whose music they stream, are the ultimate answer to the conundrum of how to compensate musicians for their recordings, 鈥渘eeds to think again,鈥� he says.
Covach pointed to a recent blog post from a consortium of bands whose music is being streamed in which said they report royalties between $36 and $58 per month.
鈥淭he idea that these micro payments are going to build a meaningful model for artists鈥� compensation is just not realistic,鈥� Covach said, 鈥渁t least not yet.鈥�
In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this past July, Swift shared her thoughts on the music industry: 鈥淧iracy, file sharing, and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically ... Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It's my opinion that music should not be free."
Swift's latest album "1989," released Oct. 27, on the Billboard 200 chart. More than 1.6 million copies have been sold.
After Swift pulled her work from Spotify shortly after the album's release, the streaming site publically pleaded for her return, urging her to #justsayyes in a social media campaign based on her 2008 hit song 鈥淟ove Story."
鈥淲e hope she'll change her mind and join us in building a new music economy that works for everyone," it said on its website.
