but he's wrong. before spotify sales were stronger, so everyone didn't just turn to piracy - some people legitimately did buy music, even with youtube and pirating sites being there, and now they don't. it's pretty difficult to make any conclusion for the falling sales other than spotify, because that was what changed between now and then. youtube and pirating were available even when more songs were sold.

The difference is that radio airplay boosts record sales while streaming has evidently destroyed sales Why is this idea so hard to grasp for you guys? Record sales PLUMMETED hardcore once Spotify became popular a couple of years ago.

Jason Aldean also just pulled his album from Spotify. Aloe Blacc also complained about getting ripped off by Spotify. Sheryl Crow also publicly backed Taylor as does Savan Kotecha. Roseanne Cash also complained about getting $200 for years worth of streaming from Spotify.

Also saying the alternative is piracy so allow us to rip you off with a pittance ain't a good argument from Spotify.

Anyway sales of Taylor's music is surging this week so she obviously made the right decision.

Taylor should just create her own rival to Spotify and put it out of business by offering artists better royalties. It would be simple to do.

honestly i hope more artists start doing this, because i prefer sales to streaming

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I don't get what's so "hard to understand".

They were going to continue to decline. People in here are still talking like Spotify is going to go away. It's not, get over it.

Actually Maroon 5 and the 50 other people who went into the making and promotion of that song. When you have to split the money so many different ways it's actually not that much.

He shouldn't answer to him, tho. I mean, who da hell is Aloe Blacc? He's irrelevant as hell. He will be like "who dat?"

Recods sales have been declining before spotify and would only continue weather or not it existed. Spotify doesnt let you select what track you want to hear, you have to spend time building a playlist diverse enough to let you hear songs you like intread of giving you random songs you dont want. Plus you only get 5 skips. Its not a great streaming service anyway.

This makes 0 sense. You prefer sales to streaming?

I quite enjoy being able to pay for a Spotify subscription every month to listen to as much music as I want without having to spend $15 to listen to an album I'll hardly play anyways.

Because Youtube isn't exactly the same? She doesn't even have her music uploaded there, it's only used for music videos and the main purpose of MVs is for promotion instead of an alternative for listening to music.

that's....pandora...

yes? i think tracking sales is way more interesting

Exactly my point. I would LOVE Spotify to work. The truth is that Spotify is not a profitable business itself yet....but he is lecturing artists and labels on their efforts to turn a profit.

um, no they weren't. digital sales were increasing quickly from every year until mid 2013. spotify became popular around that time.

Eh. Radio play and on-demand streaming are not equivalent. Airplay is promotion; it results in sales. It's profitable. With Spotify in the mix, now airplay just results in people going to stream their favorite songs instead.

I fully agree that streaming is the future, but Spotify needs to show artists that it's worth it in the long run. Many feel they are not being fairly compensated now, but Spotify claims it will be very profitable for artists once their user base becomes big enough. Why won't they offer some real projections (hard #s) of when that will be and how much it will be worth? I'm sure that would do a better job of convincing Taylor to come back than making cute playlists with her name in them.

You have to remember also that Animals is just one song. Just like Taylor has SIO and Blank Space, M5 has Maps as well as Animals.

Maps has 116.7M streams = $817,000

It Was Always You, an album track, has 27M streams = $189,000

I think Taylor would get as much or more than this.

Spotify pays out half a million, but how much goes to the songwriters?
Thats what taylor's trying to say songwriters don't get enough credit.
Didn't aloe blacc only get like 4k from 170m streams from WMU?

the spotify phone version has those restrictions too

ok but if it's really profitable for artists why have so many complained about it?

The point of contention for her is not exactly what she is getting, but what people are paying. When you literally have full albums up on spotify for free, why would anyone bother to buy it? That's not the state of the industry she wants it to be.