Hacker News Reader

Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

> Last fall, the singer Taylor Swift removed her music from Spotify in a dispute over its free version.

What's the tldr version of this? She wasn't getting enough of the revenue?

Basically. Though it is a pet peeve of mine that they refer to "Taylor Swift" as having done this, as if she was sat at the Spotify admin interface deleting albums. It was her record label that did it - a company that, by coincidence I'm sure, is looking for a buyer.

Well she made public comments about it. She basically said something about if people value the music they like they should pay for it. So it wasn't just the label, Taylor Swift was involved.

As a spokesperson for the label?

You're really that skeptical that an artist who has been dominating pop stations for years is upset that more and more of her listeners are moving to a nearly revenue-less distribution stream?

As a spokesperson for the label?

See:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/taylor-swift-scott-bo...

I guess I can't get to her conclusion that freemium = music has no value.

There are articles on here constantly about how freemium debases the value of the paid product. And you can't slap ads in the middle of a song and go viral with it if you're already the biggest.

I mean, her youtube videos do well, don't they? I don't really listen to Taylor Swift. I was simply curious about why she was upset about the concept. If it's a commentary about how when people don't actually buy the album there's something lost in the process, then yes, I absolutely can get behind that. But I'd challenge the idea that paying for the full album on iTunes or wherever online is somehow a replacement for owning the physical record. My father tried his best to make me a music purist, bestowing on me a pretty amazing collection of vinyls and those things are great...to pull out the cover and actually read the names of the people involved in creating that record...that has value, sure. But after Napster and iTunes, I was curious about the anti-spotify move from a business perspective.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com