Taylor Swift removes music from online streaming sites, limits purview of her music

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Nicole Askar, Staff Writer

“Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for,” said country-pop singer Taylor Swift, in the The Wall Street Journal

These are the words of a Grammy winner, who sold over 1.287 million copies of her first pop album “1989” in the first week of its sales. Preceding the album hitting stores, Swift pulled all of her music from Spotify and other international music streaming sites, receiving complaints from Swift aficionados and music streaming site CEOs alike.

In an interview with Time Magazine, Swift said, “Everybody’s [other musicians] complaining about how music sales are shrinking, but nobody’s changing the way they’re doing things. They keep running towards streaming, which is, for the most part, what has been shrinking the numbers of paid album sales.”

Although streaming music may have been hindering album sales, Swift was still receiving royalties from Spotify and similar sites. In a blog post, Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek claimed that Taylor Swift was on course to receive a payout “to exceed 6 million dollars.” Ek also complained that Swift lead all of her fans back to pirated music. However, Swift’s music remains available to download from iTunes and to stream from SoundCloud, Pandora, and Grooveshark.

Although Swift is entitled to appropriate royalties from Spotify and similar sites, Swift fails to see the benefits these sites create. Yes, music is art. Yes, art is important, but it is not rare. Art exists in a variety of forms, music being one of the most accessible.

Art is created to help people cope with the realities of their lives, good or bad. Spanish painter, sculptor, stage designer, poet and playwright Pablo Picasso once said, “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” Swift, who is known for expressing her life’s joys and upsets through her song lyrics, is no stranger to this concept. She uses her music to articulate her thoughts and feelings.

Swift’s music is notorious for being relatable, so limiting the means by which her music can be accessed limits the amount of people who can retrieve solace through her music. Physical forms of art are less attainable than auditory forms of art. Not everyone can afford to hop on a plane to Paris to see the Mona Lisa, but music is available to virtually anyone with a computer and a strong wifi. By limiting the availability of her music, Swift restricts her audience to those who feel no remorse for stealing her music and to those who can afford to pay for her music.