Releasing a new album is an important event for any artist, but it looks like there is one new challenge they are having to worry about.
Taylor Swift makes how much?! And she still pulled her music from Spotify?
Taylor Swift very publicly removed her new album, 1989, from Spotify last week and it looks like other artists are following her lead — Jason Aldean is the latest. According to USA Today, the country singer decided to take his new album, Old Boots, New Dirt, off the music streaming service.
“The artist or their representatives have decided not to release this album from Spotify,” a notice under Aldean’s name reads on Spotify. “We are working on it and hope they will change their mind soon.”
Losing Aldean’s album is big news for the streaming service. According to the newspaper, the album had the best debut week ever for a country album on Spotify, with more than 3 million streams in only a week.
Artists are paid when their music is streamed, based on the number of times it is streamed. But Taylor Swift, for one, doesn’t believe artists are paid fairly. She not only removed her new album from the service, but removed her entire catalog. Aldean didn’t go that far — you can still stream the rest of his albums.
“Piracy, file sharing, and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently,” Swift wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed back in July. “It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.”
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Beyoncé released a visual album back in December 2013 and kept it off Spotify. But she did keep the rest of her catalog on the streaming service to keep people excited over all her music — while also giving them a reason to buy her new album on iTunes.
Only time will tell what the future of streaming music holds, but if it’s going to change, it’s platinum artists like Taylor Swift or Jason Aldean who are going to change it.
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