TAYLOR SWIFT Pulls Her Music from Online Streaming Service Spotify

The New York Times reports that Spotify announced in a recent statement that Taylor Swift has removed all of her music from the online streaming service.

Swift's label Big Machine has ordered Spotify to remove all of her songs from the service, in an attempt to boost sales from her albums and songs.

It is not an uncommon practice in the music business to withhold songs from Spotify for a limited time before releasing them for streaming, and many artists such as Adele, Coldplay and Beyoncé have done the same in the past. Initiallly selling the albums as downloads and as CDs yields much higher royalty rates than does releasing music to an online streaming service immediately. Downloads and CDs also lead to higher opening week numbers, giving artists bragging rights in the music industry. Swift's most recent album, 1989, was released no differently, although a single from the album titled 'Shake It Off' was released for streaming.

Big Machine's request to remove Swift's music from Spotify was answered, and as of Monday, her music is no longer available on the service. Spotify responded to the issue with a passive-aggresive sounding blog post titled, 'On Taylor Swift's Decision to Remove Her Music From Spotify' where they went on to defend their unique business model.

Initial sales of '1989' are lower than expected, but estimates place sales at an eventual 1.3million copies, making Swift's new album one of the biggest of 2014.

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