"My heart'southward been borrowed and yours has been blue. All'due south well that ends well, to finish up with you lot."
Taylor Swift probably didn't write these lyrics – taken from her new album, Lover – about Spotify founder Daniel Ek. But if she did, she couldn't accept picked words that were whatever more apt.
Swift'due south longstanding bad-mannered relationship with Ek'south green machine will officially get water nether the span on Fri (Baronial 23), when Lover is released on a range of streaming services, including Spotify, in addition to download platforms and physical retail stores.
In the pb-up to launch day, Swift and Spotify are getting remarkably cozy.
The above lyrics are currently visible on a gigantic, blown up billboard in New York Urban center (pictured inset) – paid for past SPOT to promote the Grammy-winning artist's new opus.
Today (August 20), Spotify has even launched an exclusive new Lover-themed playlist ('Dearest, Taylor') which volition see Swift reveal never-before-seen lyrics from the album via "sound bulletin love letters" each day up to release. That process began this morning with a fresh lyric reveal ("I tin can't talk to y'all when you're like this/ Staring out the window similar I'yard non you're favorite town/ I'm New York City").
Spotify has pledged that it volition bring these previewed lyrics to life via physical "dearest letters" that volition appear in locations effectually the world. (Thus the giant NYC roller imprint, as trumpeted on Spotify's ain Instagram page yesterday.)
Come Fri, the 'Honey, Taylor' playlist will host all 18 tracks of Lover, plus personal lyrics/messages from Swift, equally well as backstories nigh the album and more.
This is definitely new territory for Swift and Spotify, who haven't exactly been the comfiest of bedfellows over the past half-decade.
In October 2014, Taylor Swift released her nearly successful anthology to appointment, 1989. It did not appear on Spotify.
Explaining that determination, Swift said: "[The] landscape of the music industry itself is changing so apace that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment. And I'grand not willing to contribute my life'south piece of work to an experiment that I don't feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music. [I] just don't concord with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be gratis."
A month later, in Nov 2014, Swift pulled her entire catalog from Spotify as an act of protest against the service'south ad-funded 'gratuitous' tier – specifically, the fact that artists (at this time) couldn't chose to only release their music on Spotify'due south paid for Premium offering.
"It'southward my opinion that music should not exist gratis, and my prediction is that private artists and their labels will someday decide what an album's price betoken is."
Taylor Swift, writing in July 2014
In a portentous op/ed in the Wall Street Journal penned a few months earlier, Swift wrote: "In contempo years, you've probably read the articles most major recording artists who have decided to practically give their music away, for this promotion or that sectional deal. My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I encounter…is that they all realize their worth and enquire for information technology.
"Music is fine art, and art is of import and rare. Of import, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.
"It'due south my opinion that music should not be gratuitous, and my prediction is that private artists and their labels will someday decide what an anthology's toll point is. I hope they don't underestimate themselves or undervalue their fine art."
An ill-advised blog post from Spotify CEO Daniel Ek followed that WSJ piece, in which the Swedish exec revealed: "At our current size, payouts for a superlative artist like Taylor Swift (earlier she pulled her itemize) are on rails to exceed $half-dozen 1000000 a twelvemonth, and that's only growing – we expect that number to double once again in a year."
Ek added: " Y'all can't expect at Spotify in isolation – even though Taylor tin 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 similar YouTube and SoundCloud, where people tin listen all they desire for free.
"[That's to] say nothing of the fans who will just turn dorsum to pirate services like Grooveshark. And sure enough, if you lot looked at the height spot on The Pirate Bay last calendar week, there was 1989…"
Swift was evidently not impressed with this clap-dorsum.
"I found information technology actually ironic that the multi-billion-dollar [Apple] reacted to criticism with humility, and the commencement-up with no greenbacks flow [Spotify] reacted to criticism like a corporate car."
Taylor Swift, speaking in Baronial 2015
Referencing the marked deviation she'd witnessed betwixt Apple and Spotify in reaction to her public critique of their services, she told Vanity Fair in Baronial 2015: "I constitute it really ironic that the multi-billion-dollar company reacted to criticism with humility, and the first-upwardly with no cash menses reacted to criticism like a corporate auto."
(That 'startup with no greenbacks flow', if it needed clarifying, was Spotify.)
In summertime 2015, Spotify's biggest global rival, Apple Music, launched – following some strongly-worded, quickly resolved, public censuring from Swift over artist compensation. Apple Music arrived compete with the total Swift back catalog, now conspicuously missing from Spotify.
By the end of 2015, Swift and her then-label Large Machine were getting strikingly close to Apple, signing a global exclusive bargain with Apple Music to exclusively host and distribute the official concert motion picture of her 1989 tour.
And then, in 2016, Swift's relationship with Apple got even warmer still, as she agreed to star in a series of ads promoting Apple tree Music (see below).
Swift'due south music would not render to Spotify until June 2017, when her back itemize re-appeared a couple of months before her big comeback record – Await What Y'all Made Me Do (released in August 2017) – besides landed on the platform.
Yet Swift had one more disappointment for Spotify: she decided that she would 'window' the release of her Reputation anthology, released in November 2017, presumably in a bid to maximize her traditional sales.
This meant keeping the full Reputation anthology off streaming services like Spotify and Apple tree Music at launch, instead only making it available equally a physical purchase and download.
It came to streaming platforms iii weeks later.
Lover, then, marks something of a reset for Spotify and Swift's relationship.
SPOT appears to be going all out to 'win' a battle with Apple tree Music to be the biggest audio streaming partner for the tape; Apple announced in June that Lover had broken its day-1 record for 'pre-adds'.
For Swift'southward own business, likewise, Lover is a very significant release – it being her first ever studio LP non to be released on Big Car.
Instead, Swift owns the copyrights to this new fabric, which is existence distributed by Republic Records and Universal Music Group.
Information technology is therefore fair to presume that, however information technology performs, Swift volition be commercially gaining more from every auction (and every "streaming equivalent" sale) of Lover than she did for whatever of her prior half dozen records signed to Scott Borchetta.
All optics volition now be on whether Lover appears on Spotify's free tier, or exclusively on the service's premium / paid-for subscription level, this Fri.
If it is bachelor for complimentary from day one, information technology will be a tacit admission from Swift that her bold words in 2014 – "Information technology's my opinion that music should non be free, and my prediction is that private artists and their labels will someday decide what an anthology'south cost point is." – were disappointingly wide of the mark.
[In the involvement of posterity, below is Daniel Ek's blog in full from November 2014, written in reaction to Swift's conclusion to pull down her catalog from Spotify. It is no longer available on any of SPOT's websites.]
ii Billion and Counting
Taylor Swift is admittedly right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it. We started Spotify because we beloved music and piracy was killing it. So all the talk swirling around lately almost how Spotify is making coin on the backs of artists upsets me big fourth dimension. Our whole reason for existence is to help fans find music and help artists connect with fans through a platform that protects them from piracy and pays them for their amazing piece of work.
Quincy Jones posted on Facebook that "Spotify is not the enemy; piracy is the enemy". Y'all know why? Two numbers: Null and Two Billion. Piracy doesn't pay artists a penny – nothing, aught, zip. Spotify has paid more than ii billion dollars to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists. A billion dollars from the time we started Spotify in 2008 to last year and some other billion dollars since then. And that's 2 billion dollars' worth of listening that would have happened with zero or little compensation to artists and songwriters through piracy or practically equivalent services if at that place was no Spotify – we're working day and night to recover money for artists and the music business organisation that piracy was stealing away.
When I hear stories most artists and songwriters who say they've seen trivial or no money from streaming and are naturally aroused and frustrated, I'k really frustrated too. The music industry is changing – and we're proud of our part in that change – merely lots of problems that have plagued the industry since its inception continue to exist. Every bit I said, nosotros've already paid more than $2 billion in royalties to the music industry and if that coin is not flowing to the creative community in a timely and transparent way, that'southward a big problem. We will practice anything we can to piece of work with the industry to increment transparency, better speed of payments, and give artists the opportunity to promote themselves and connect with fans – that's our responsibleness equally a leader in this industry; and information technology's the correct thing to exercise.
Nosotros're trying to build a new music economic system that works for artists in a mode the music manufacture never has before. And it is working – Spotify is the unmarried biggest commuter of growth in the music industry, the number one source of increasing revenue, and the first or second biggest source of overall music acquirement in many places. Those are facts. But there are at least three big misconceptions out at that place well-nigh how we work, how much we pay, and what we mean for the future of music and the artists who create it. Let'southward take a await at them.
Myth number 1: gratis music for fans means artists don't get paid. On Spotify, nada could exist further from the truth. Not all free music is created equal – on Spotify, free music is supported by ads, and we pay for every play. Until we launched Spotify, there were two economic models for streaming services: all gratuitous or all paid, never together, and both models had a fatal flaw. The paid-only services never took off (despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing), because users were being asked to pay for something that they were already getting for free on piracy sites. The gratuitous services, which scaled massively, paid side by side to zippo back to artists and labels, and were often only a step away from piracy, implemented without regard to licensing, and they offered no path to convert all their free users into paying customers. Paid provided monetization without scale, gratuitous reached scale without monetization, and neither produced anywhere near plenty money to replace the ongoing decline in music industry revenue.
We had a different thought. We believed that a blended option – or 'freemium' model – would build scale and monetization together, ultimately creating a new music economy that gives fans admission to the music they love and pays artists fairly for their amazing work. Why link complimentary and paid? Because the hardest thing about selling a music subscription is that most of our competition comes from the tons of free music available just about everywhere. Today, people listen to music in a wide diversity of ways, but by far the three well-nigh pop ways are radio, YouTube, and piracy – all free. Here'south the overwhelming, undeniable, inescapable bottom line: the vast bulk of music listening is unpaid. If we desire to drive people to pay for music, nosotros have to compete with gratis to get their attention in the kickoff identify.
So our theory was simple – offer a terrific free tier, supported by advertising, as a starting point to attract fans and get them in the door. And unlike other gratuitous music options – from piracy to YouTube to SoundCloud – we pay artists and rights holders every time a song is played on our free service. Simply it's not as flexible or uninterrupted equally Premium. If you've e'er used Spotify's gratuitous service on mobile, you know what I mean – but like radio, you tin can selection the kind of music yous want to hear only can't command the specific vocal that'south being played, or what gets played next, and y'all accept to listen to ads. We believed that equally fans invested in Spotify with time, listening to their favorite music, discovering new music and sharing it with their friends, they would eventually desire the full liberty offered by our premium tier, and they'd exist willing to pay for information technology.
"At our electric current size, payouts for a tiptop creative person similar Taylor Swift (earlier she pulled her itemize) are on track to exceed $6 million a twelvemonth, and that'southward simply growing – we expect that number to double again in a year."
Daniel Ek, writing in 2014
Nosotros were right. Our gratuitous service drives our paid service. Today we accept more than than l million active users of whom 12.5 million are subscribers each paying $120 per year. That's three times more than the average paying music consumer spent in the past. What'southward more, the majority of these paying users are nether the age of 27, fans who grew upward with piracy and never expected to pay for music. Just hither's the key fact: more than eighty% of our subscribers started as free users. If you take away only one thing, it should exist this: No gratis, no paid, no ii billion dollars.
Myth number two: Spotify pays, just information technology pays and so fiddling per play nobody could ever earn a living from it. First of all, let's be clear about what a single stream – or listen – is: it's one person playing one vocal one time. So people throw effectually a lot of stream counts that seem big and then tell you they're associated with payouts that sound small. Merely let's look at what those counts really represent. If a vocal has been listened to 500 yard times on Spotify, that's the same as information technology having been played 1 time on a U.S. radio station with a moderate sized audience of 500 thousand people. Which would pay the recording artist precisely … zip at all. But the equivalent of that one play and it's 500 m listens on Spotify would pay out between 3 and four thousand dollars. The Spotify equivalent of x plays on that radio station – once a day for a week and a half – would be worth thirty to xl thousand dollars.
Now, let'south wait at a hit unmarried, say Hozier'southward 'Take Me To Church'. In the months since that vocal was released, information technology's been listened to enough times to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars for his label and publisher. At our current size, payouts for a top artist similar Taylor Swift (before she pulled her catalog) are on rails to exceed $6 million a year, and that'southward only growing – we await that number to double again in a year. Whatsoever way you cut information technology, one thing is clear – we're paying an enormous amount of money to labels and publishers for distribution to artists and songwriters, and significantly more than whatever other streaming service.
Myth number 3: Spotify hurts sales, both download and concrete. This is classic correlation without causation – people meet that downloads are down and streaming is upward, so they presume the latter is causing the quondam. Except the whole correlation falls apart when you lot realize a simple fact: downloads are dropping but as quickly in markets where Spotify doesn't be. Canada is a great example, because it has a mature music market place very similar to the US. Spotify launched in Canada a few weeks ago. In the commencement one-half of 2014, downloads declined but as dramatically in Canada – without Spotify – equally they did everywhere else. If Spotify is cannibalising downloads, who's cannibalising Canada?
By the aforementioned token, we've got a great list of artists who promoted their new releases on Spotify and had terrific sales and lots of streaming besides – like Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, Lana Del Rey and alt-J. Artists from Daft Punk to Calvin Harris to Eminem had number ones and were on Spotify at the same fourth dimension too.
Which brings us back to Taylor Swift. She sold more than ane.ii million copies of 1989 in the US in its first week, and that's awesome. We hope she sells a lot more than because she's an infrequent artist producing great music. Simply she'southward the but artist who has sold more than a million copies in an anthology'southward first week since 2002. In the old days, multiple artists sold multiple millions every twelvemonth. That just doesn't happen any more; people'due south listening habits accept inverse – and they're not going to change back. You tin can't look at Spotify in isolation – even though Taylor can pull her music off Spotify (where nosotros 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 mind all they want for free. To say zip of the fans who will just plow 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…
Here's the thing I actually desire artists to understand: Our interests are totally aligned with yours. Fifty-fifty if you don't believe that'due south our goal, expect at our business. Our whole business is to maximize the value of your music. We don't use music to drive sales of hardware or software. We use music to get people to pay for music. The more than we grow, the more nosotros'll pay you lot. We're going to exist transparent nearly it all the way through. And we have a big team of your young man artists here because if yous think we oasis't done well enough, nosotros want to know, and we desire to do better. None of that is e'er going to change.
We're getting fans to pay for music over again. We're connecting artists to fans they would never have otherwise institute, and nosotros're paying them for every single listen. We're not just streaming, we're mainstreaming now, and that's skillful for music makers and music lovers around the globe.Music Business Worldwide
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