Taylor Swift has pulled all of her albums from Spotify, and the music streaming service is not too pleased with the situation. Though her latest album, “1989,” was never available on the service, whenever users searched for the album, Spotify showed this message:
“The artist or their representatives have decided not to release this album on Spotify. We are working on it and hope they will change their mind soon.”
The head of Spotify’s public policy, Jonathan Prince, tweeted something catchy at Swift on Thursday asking her to make the album available.
Hey @taylorswift13 the haters gonna hate, hate, hate but 40 million+ Spotifiers gonna play, play, play. Don’t let them down for too long. xo
— jonathan prince (@jonathanmprince) October 30, 2014
But Swift didn’t take the not-so-subtle hint well. Now, a week after “1989” dropped, all Swift’s albums have been removed from the service. So on Monday, Spotify responded to Swift’s actions, posting this message on its blog.
“We love Taylor Swift, and our more than 40 million users love her even more — nearly 16 million of them have played her songs in the last 30 days, and she’s on over 19 million playlists.
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% of our revenue back to the music community.
PS — Taylor, we were both young when we first saw you, but now there’s more than 40 million of us who want you to stay, stay, stay. It’s a love story, baby, just say, Yes.”
With the message, the service included a playlist made specifically for Taylor Swift and one for users to listen to “while Taylor’s away.”
Swift has expressed her disdain for streaming and file sharing services like Spotify when she penned an article in the “Wall Street Journal,” saying, “Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free.”
Swift also announced her upcoming world tour for the new album Monday, causing the singer’s website to crash. (RELATED: Stop Underestimating How Hot Taylor Swift Is)