spotify logo
Photo by Emmanuel Dunand of Getty Images
loading...

If you use Spotify to listen to your music or manage your playlists, you may have noticed that your Taylor Swift music recently disappeared. That's because Swift pulled her music off the service recently.

Earlier this month, Taylor said, “Everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment. And I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music. And I just don’t agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free..."

The CEO of SPOTIFY, Daniel Ek  gave his take on this this week. He took to the company blog to address the situation.

EK writes, "Taylor Swift is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it. We started SPOTIFY because we love music and piracy was killing it. So all the talk swirling around lately about how SPOTIFY is making money on the backs of artists upsets me big time. Our whole reason for existence is to help fans find music and help artists connect with fans through a platform that protects them from piracy and pays them for their amazing work.

"When I hear stories about artists and songwriters who say they’ve seen little or no money from streaming and are naturally angry and frustrated, I’m really frustrated too. The music industry is changing -- and we’re proud of our part in that change -- but lots of problems that have plagued the industry since its inception continue to exist. We’ve already paid more than $2 billion in royalties to the music industry and if that money is not flowing to the creative community in a timely and transparent way, that’s a big problem. We will do anything we can to work with the industry to increase transparency, improve speed of payments, and give artists the opportunity to promote themselves and connect with fans – that’s our responsibility as a leader in this industry; and it’s the right thing to do."

You can read his entire statement here.

More From WBSM-AM/AM 1420