Taylor Swift's Spotify exodus might actually change something, sort of

sincity · December 16, 2014

The war between Taylor Swift and Spotify, which saw a mass exodus of Swift's songs from the service and the company responding by pointing out all the money she's missed out on because of that, may have elicited some change on Spotify's end. Sort of.

As anyone might have predicted, it's Spotify, not the singer, who's eating crow on this one, though this probably isn't the shift Swift was hoping for.

"What it has highlighted for us is we need to do a better job explaining to artists how streaming benefits them," Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek told Billboard.

Um, OK. So you're not actually going to change anything, you're just going to explain it better? But wait, there's more.

No pressure

"The point that's been lost is that Spotify's the fastest-growing revenue source the industry has," Ek continued. "There are many artists to whom, through the labels, we're paying out millions a year already. Those check sizes will just keep increasing. I'm certain that if we can get the billion-people-plus that are consuming music online and move them into a model like Spotify, the industry would be considerably bigger than it is today."

He's clearly pulling numbers out of a hat when he says that "there's a billion people doing [piracy]," but his point that those people should be catered to with legal services, and not simply discounted, is still valid.

He added that despite this debate, Spotify will still not allow artists or labels to determine what's available on which Spotify subscription tiers.

He also said that - contrary to certain rumors about Apple putting pressure on the whole music industry to lower streaming subscription prices - Spotify hasn't felt any pressure from labels in that area.