Taylor Swift pulling her music from Spotify is equivalent to thumbing her nose at the fans

Music streaming has become the norm. When did you last buy a CD or, gasp, cassette or album? And we will not even discuss the 8-track tapes. That made yesterday's news cycle a bit baffling. Artists should be falling over themselves for ubiquity, not heading towards obscurity. But some apparently simply don't get it.

It has been revealed that Taylor Swift, a vastly popular singer, has pulled her music from Spotify. The artist seems to be worried about piracy, something that seems of little concern to most musicians today.

Swift revealed to the Wall Street Journal that "piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically and every artist has handled this blow differently". With today's streaming services being a simple monthly payment away it seems a bad move to forgo the income stream that results from these outlets.

Every phone, tablet and set-top box has access to these services. It's the new norm. It's how people today listen to music. Miss Swift won't be selling many CDs so she likely needs to grow up and adapt to the world.

Or perhaps it wasn't her, but came via the record label, Big Machine Records. If so then it's negligence on the part of the company. However, given the above quote, the decision may have come from Taylor herself.

Spotify, for its part, has responded -- "We hope she'll change her mind and join us in building a new music economy that works for everyone. 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 percent of our revenue back to the music community".

These standoffs are not new in the world of digital media. We've seen many cable providers and TV networks hold out on one another. The Beatles famously refused to release their catalogue to digital services for quite some time.

Hopefully Taylor Swift and her record company will soon come to their senses and this little incident will be resolved to mutual benefit. Otherwise, both parties lose out on revenue. Right now we are at a no-win situation for all. We'll see where things lead, and hopefully the result won't take long to come about.

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