Taylor Swift has removed her entire back catalogue from Spotify, the company has announced in a blog post pleading for the singer to return.
Swift withheld her new album ‘1989’, which is on course to sell a record-breaking 1.3 million-plus copies, from the music streaming service when it was released last week.
Spotify broke the news that she has now removed the rest of her music from the service in a blog post entitled “On Taylor Swift’s Decision To Remove Her Music from Spotify” today. The company begged Swift to come back and emphasised its belief that fans should be free to listen to music however they want.
“We hope [Swift] will change her mind and join us in building a new music economy that works for everyone,” the company wrote. “We believe fans should be able to listen to music wherever and whenever they want, and that artists have an absolute right to be paid for their work and protected from piracy. That’s why we pay nearly 70% of our revenue back to the music community.”
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Spotify added that nearly 16 million of its 40 million active users had played Swift’s songs in the last month, while her tracks have been added to more than 19 million playlists. It ended its plea with a reference to one of Swift’s own lyrics: “PS – Taylor, we were both young when we first saw you, but now there’s more than 40 million of us who want you to stay, stay, stay. It’s a love story, baby, just say, Yes.”
Swift has been vocal about her feelings on Spotify in the past. The ‘Shake It Off’ singer refused to allow her 2012 album, ‘Red’, to appear on the service when it first debuted, and also criticised Spotify’s streaming model in an article for the Wall Street Journal earlier this year.
“Piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently,” she wrote. “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.”
Earlier today, Swift announced a trio of UK live dates as part of her ‘1989’ world tour.