Perhaps you've heard: Taylor Swift is going to dominate the Billboard charts when official results come out next Wednesday. Initial projects suggested 1989 would sell between 800,000 and 900,000 copies, and that estimate has since been upped to 1.2 million. That's more than three times more than the next highest debut this year (Coldplay's Ghost Stories). One aspect of the album that's largely been skipped over is Swift/Big Machine's decision not to offer the record on Spotify. Many who were aware suggest this as proof that the streaming trend can be beaten. Never has "correlation doesn't equal causation" been more true.
That argument basically comes down to two performers, the aforementioned Swift and Coldplay. It's easy to refer to the two largest debuts of 2014 as proof that holding out works, to claim that the high sales are indications that people will go out and buy music when they can't stream it. That's tough to prove. If Swift can reach 1.2 million, that will still be slightly less than the first week sales for her last album, Red. Ghost Stories also debuted with about 80,000 less copies sold in its first week than the band's 2011 album Mylo Xyloto. So it seems album sales are falling regardless of streaming possibilities.
Swift and Coldplay also share one thing that most other acts don't: They're huge acts. Swift is probably has more sales potential than any other act on the planet. Regardless of streaming, odds are that fans are going to bum rush stores when any new music drops.
The ultimate question however is whether streaming is bad for the music industry. No honest answer can escape being wishy-washy. There's no doubt that performers don't profit from an album stream nearly as much as they can an album purchase, and much of that is because services like Spotify push for as low a royalty rate as possible per stream. That hurts. At the same time, streaming is a major factor in deterring piracy. There's no reason for someone to hack music when they can get it via a free and legal method. The top comment left on Digital Music News notes that he found 1989 in "under 10 seconds" on Grooveshark. Streaming is a bullet that musicians are better off biting than hoping it will go away. Hopefully labels will fight to get them more from it.
