You may have recently noticed that Taylor Swift's entire new album, 1989, is nowhere to be found on Spotify.
This wasn't just an error or ommission, but it was actually Taylor's team that requested her album be yanked from the service. The reason for this according to her record label is that she didn't want to embarrass any of her fans who legally purchased it. In the week her album was released, she sold 1.3 million copies, so there were lots of fans that she was trying to protect from being embarrassed.
She reasoned that no "superfan" who purchased her album should be embarrassed by being asked why they would purchase an album when they can just listen to it for free on Spotify.
Indirectly though, it may be a warning to streaming music services that their business model isn't being fair to artists. An artist like Swift can generate millions of listens to any of her songs, but the artists are generally compensated in the vicinity of between $0.006 and $0.0084 per song streamed according to a Rolling Stone article. Doesn't add to much.
Other artists have called out these services in the past and Taylor is just the next in what will become an even lengthier line in months to come.
