Taylor Swift has been one of the most popular artists worldwide for a long time now. With a net worth of 360 million and a yearly salary of over 150 million, she has made a fortune to last a lifetime by the young age of 27. As a fresh college graduate in desperate need of money, I look at Swift with wide eyes. What does one even begin to do with that money? Pay your debts, live in a nice home, eat well… then what?
Sure, artists deserve to make money off of their art just as any other job works. 100%. But where do we draw the line? When do artists lose touch with their craft and just become hungry for more money? Apparently for Swift, after 10 million albums are sold. After denying Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, and Tidal access to her music for years, she has now agreed to release her music to the world of streaming. Note that this is as a “thank you” to her fans for buying 10 million albums and 100 million songs.
In other words, now that she has ensured that all of her fans have coughed up the $7.99 to buy her album, she figures it’s time to finally hand it over. God bless you Taylor Swift! Mother fucking Teresa. What really gets me is the reason that she withheld her music in the first place. She states, “I think there should be an inherent value placed on art.” Absolutely. But it’s 2017 Taylor, not 1989. And after all is said and done, I cannot believe that the person behind the argument for compensation for aesthetic value is Taylor Swift. I’m not saying her tunes aren’t catchy as hell, because they are. But I can think of dozens of musicians who deserve far more recognition than Taylor’s little pop hits.
Come on America, let’s not praise Taylor Swift for allowing us to access her music for free when this is what typical musicians have been doing from the beginning. She really knows how to manipulate her consumer. She shoots, she scores. Once again Taylor Swift needs recognition from the public about something that should have been a given. Fuck you Taylor Swift. You’re not fooling anyone.
Would you download Swift’s music for free? Tweet @StarterNoise.
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Maggie Joe is a recent graduate from the University of Colorado at Boulder where she got her BFA in filmmaking and creative writing. Her long term goals would be writing and directing her own television series, along with self publishing a book of poetry. On any given day you can find Maggie shopping for new skincare at TJ Maxx, preaching feminism at frat boys, and senselessly binge watching whatever is playing on TLC.