A few weeks ago, Taylor Swift caused a bit of a stir when she pulled her entire catalogue, including her recent platinum seller 1989, from Spotify, saying that the streaming service perpetuates "the perception that music has no value and should be free."
Not everybody is buying Swift's story, however, and today, Nov. 18, British folk legend Billy Bragg posted a lengthy statement to his Facebook page explaining why Swift's reasons for pulling her music from Spotify are dishonest, citing the fact that her music is featured in Google's recently launched Music Key streaming service.
"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," Bragg writes in the Facebook post, "which also offers listeners a free service alongside a premium subscription tier."
Taylor Swift's 1989 has famously become the only album released in 2014 to have sold a million copies, with some arguing that her decision to pull the album from Spotify contributed to its strong sales.
"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," Bragg continues. "[S]he 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.'"
Despite Bragg's claims, Swift's publicist issued a statement to NME denying any exclusive involvement with Music Key, saying, "Taylor Swift has had absolutely no discussion or agreement of any kind with Google's new music streaming service."
You can check out Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" music video here:
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