After declaring it the enemy, Taylor Swift has embraced streaming. What can we learn from this?

It wasn’t all that long ago that Taylor Swift was railing against the evils of streaming companies like Spotify in publications like the Wall Street Journal. Now, though, she’s had a road-to-Damascus conversion. Streaming? Tay-Tay’s all for it. What happened?

The Economist has asked the same question.

“Her seventh album, Lover, was released on streaming services and in physical form simultaneously on August 23rd. Why did Ms Swift relent? The first answer is probably that she had won all her battles. While Spotify’s royalty rates are never going to match those from physical sales, it can still generate tremendous revenues for popular artists. And, on signing to Universal last year, Ms Swift was promised that when the company sold its stake in Spotify, it would distribute the money to its artists, without that payment being counted against any debts they had to the label. She had taken on those she felt were penalising musicians and she had beaten them. Now was the time to ally with her former foes.”

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