Photo: Wenn
No stranger to fighting injustice wherever he finds it Billy Bragg has complained that Taylor Swift has 'sold her soul to Google', although Swift's representatives claim no deal is in place.
Following Swift's decision to remove her entire back catalogue from Spotify citing 'there is a value to what musicians have created', Bragg writes on his Facebook: "What a shame that Taylor Swift’s principled stand against those who would give her music away for free has turned out to be nothing more than a corporate power play. On pulling her music from Spotify recently, she made a big issue of the fact that the majority of the streaming service’s users listen to her tracks for nothing rather than signing up to the subscription service."
Bragg adressed the comments Swift recently to about the streaming service that was made her up to $390,000 in the month of October alone. "These worthy sentiments have been somewhat undermined by Swift making her new album and back catalogue available on Google’s new Music Key streaming service…..which also offers listeners a free service alongside a premium subscription tier."
Bragg isn't against Swift per se, just the illusion that the decision is a business one not an artistic one. "Given that this year is the first to fail to produce a new million selling album, I can understand Taylor Swift wanting to maximise her opportunities with the new record – and it worked: she shifted 1.28m copies of 1989 in the first week of sale. But she should just be honest with her fans and say “sorry, but Sergey Brin gave me a huge amount of money to be the headline name on the marquee for the launch of You Tube Music Key and so I’ve sold my soul to Google”.
Bragg also suggest that there are alternative actions Taylor could have taken. "If Ms Swift was truly concerned about perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free, she should be removing her material from You Tube, not cosying up to it. The de facto biggest streaming service in the world, with all the content available free, You Tube is the greatest threat to any commercially based streaming service. You might ask yourself why Google are setting up a commercial streaming service that will ultimately have to compete with their own You Tube behemoth? My hunch is that they are following a ‘Starbucks strategy’: it doesn’t matter if your own coffee shops on every corner are competing with one another, so long as they ultimately put all of your rivals out of business.
Bragg concludes. "Google are going after Spotify and Taylor Swift has just chosen sides. That’s her prerogative as a savvy businesswoman – but please don’t try to sell this corporate power play to us as some sort of altruistic gesture in solidarity with struggling music makers."
However Swift's representatives have told NME following the post that "Taylor Swift has had absolutely no discussion or agreement of any kind with Google's new music streaming service."
For those looking to experience Bragg live rather than stream him, he will be performing at the XFM Winter Wonderland gigs in December.
On 17 December Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls, The Horrors, Catfish & The Bottlemen, Billy Bragg, To Kill A King and Billy The Kid will take over the O2 Academy Brixton.
This year is the 11th annual event from the station, and once again profits from the gigs will be going to Warchild. Tickets available here.
