Taylor Swift pulls music from Spotify, raises questions about fair compensation

Taylor Swift, country and pop music icon, made headlines last week after she unexpectedly removed her music from Spotify, the popular online music streaming service that allows subscribers to have unlimited access to music for a monthly fee.

Heath Jones, professor of music, uses Spotify and has his own jazz album accessible through the service.

“The way Spotify works is, every time someone plays your song you get two cents,” Jones said. “But there’s also another way. I have an album that’s on Spotify and I chose not to get any money, so if someone plays my album I get no proceeds from it. But what it offered me is, [the opportunity for] my album to have access worldwide.”

Jones said he believes Taylor Swift pulled her music from Spotify to boost album sales and revenue.

“I think Taylor Swift pulled her music off Spotify because it just comes down to money, she wasn’t making enough money,” Jones said. “It’s whatever’s best for the artist and it changes all the time.”

A few notable musicians have stated similar opinions about Spotify. Aloe Blacc, a singer and songwriter, wrote an article for Wired about how he believed Spotify was not fairly compensating songwriters.

“The abhorrently low rates songwriters are paid by streaming services—enabled by outdated federal regulations—are yet another indication our work is being devalued in today’s marketplace,” Blacc wrote.

When Jones put his album on Spotify, he had to sign an agreement saying he owned the mechanical licensing.

“If you create an original song, you own the mechanical license,” Jones said. “If you perform a song that was written by another artist, you’d have to buy a mechanical license per number of copies.”

Jones put his album on Spotify for a few different reasons.

“I chose several options cause I want to compare them, but mainly Spotify because I want quick international exposure, and it’s a new thing,” Jones said.

Jones said he enjoys Spotify because it gives him easy access to music, mainly jazz.

“Sometimes jazz is hard to obtain and I can find them on Spotify,” Jones said. “Like when I was teaching a song to the OC jazz band here. When I’m looking for a recording I can find it on Spotify and I can play it for them.”

A difference between iTunes and Spotify is the size and cost of their separate libraries.

“The iTunes library is not always as large,” Jones sad. “If I want a song from iTunes I have to purchase it immediately, or sometimes there are times that you buy the whole album. And in my case, it’s easier for me just to pay a monthly membership and I can have a larger library full of music and I’m looking for a lot of jazz, so it’s great to have a large library than iTunes.”

Senior Daniel Redding listens to Spotify on a regular basis and said Spotify has music of almost all genres.

“They have almost everything,” Redding said. “I can look up almost any band, and they don’t have all of the music that every band has, but they have most of it.”

Redding read about Spotify online and has used it since then.

“I heard about it online somewhere and tried it out,” Redding said. “I thought it worked pretty well and so I kept using it. I don’t really use it on my phone because they don’t allow everything to work there unless you pay for it. So I’m using it on my computer manually.”

Music from Spotify is downloadable onto a cell phone through its app, but Spotify requires a paid subscription to access this feature.

“You can download [the] music if you pay for Spotify Premium,” Redding said. “I don’t pay for Spotify Premium.”

Spotify offers a different way for people to share and listen to music.

“You can just create an account and share music,” Redding said. “You can chat with all of your friends, some people can follow you, you can follow other people and see what music they listen to on a regular basis. Any music I listen to on my computer will post to my feed on Facebook and it’ll show everybody what I’m listening to. It doesn’t cost money for an account.”

Redding said he recommends it.

“It’s a really good app,” Redding said. ”It takes a lot of processing power, that’s the only thing about it.”

Sophomore Colin Powers listens to Spotify daily and uses the app on his phone.

“I have recommended it to several people,” Powers said. “I find it a whole lot better than many of the other programs that are out there.”