Recently, an extremely controversial issue has swept
across the world of pop music. I first read about this issue on Facebook, and
shortly after, this topic appeared on many other online news articles. It
appears that the world famous pop star Taylor Swift has decided to take her
music off of Spotify; this is one of the largest free music sharing
applications. I didn’t believe the article at first, so I decided to log into
my Spotify account and check myself. After searching her name, the results
appeared as though she never existed in the music industry. At first I was a
little upset and thought that it was selfish of her to take her music away from her audience. However,
after doing some research, I learned that withdrawing her music from Spotify is
a way for her to go against music sharing websites and to try and save a sort
of declining music industry.
First, I want to briefly explain how Spotify works
and how it could possibly hurt the music industry and its artists. Spotify is a
free application – the only downside is that there are some ads that pop up
after every couple songs. All you need to sign up is an email and an
appropriate age. Once you have it, you can listen to an infinite amount of
songs by your favorite artists. You don’t have to purchase any of these albums
or songs in order to listen to them at the best quality! While all this is
great, it leaves a problem for artists like Taylor. Here is a quote from Yahoo Music that discusses the issue about Spotify:
“Music streaming services and file sharing have sharply cut into music sales for artists over the past couple of years.”
This is relevant because if these music sharing
websites have all these albums available for free access, people won’t actually
buy the album in regular stores or on digital music stores like iTunes. According
to a news article about decline in music sales, free music is challenging the
music industry. If there are no sales,
the artists won’t make money for the work that they produced. Since they have
to sell their music for a living, how can they do this if websites like Spotify
have their music on it already? If someone knows they can listen to it for
free, they wouldn’t waste their money to buy it.
After doing some more reading from the Yahoo Music
article, Taylor Swift is smart for making this rebellious move towards music
sharing. If she allowed Spotify to stream her new 1989 album, obviously people wouldn’t actually buy it. By doing
this, she sold about 1.3 million copies within the first week, which is a record
in music sales since 2002. Her actions show a powerful statement: we can save
the music industry and artists and increase sales if people actually buy music
and stop using streaming websites.
Do you agree with Taylor and think that music
sharing websites are negatively affecting artists? Even if I like using
Spotify, it’s true that people are taking advantage of the artists who made the
songs. While all this is true, people won’t stop using Spotify, but hopefully
we can get them to use it less.
I think whether or not music sharing websites are negatively affecting artists depends on the views of the artist. Taylor Swift currently views it negatively because of a lack of music sales. Thus, the lack of music sales is more important than allowing her music to be streamed by millions. I believe it is only a matter of time before her music is back on Spotify.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that these sharing websites are negatively affecting artists because I feel those who intend to buy the music will, and those who have no interest won't. For Taylor, she did what she thought she had to do and that's cool. Those who are devout fans will buy her music, those who aren't extreme fans will continue to listen to her music on the radio because it will still play.
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