The stream is not Swift

As you'll know, Spotify no longer has Taylor Swift: No 1989; no nothing.

People are viewing the yanking of her catalogue through a prism of a Wall Street Journal piece from last year:

"Music is art, and art is important and rare," Swift wrote in the Journal. "Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It's my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album's price point is. I hope they don't underestimate themselves or undervalue their art."

(Nice fudge there of 'individual artists and their labels' setting album price points; good luck, Iggy Spiggott out of Iggy And The Spiggotts in telling Sony you want your debut record to retail at £17.23.)

But is there another aspect to this story?

Music Ally has an interesting nugget:

Music Ally understands that [Swift's label] Big Machine was even in talks with Spotify at one point to have Swift’s new album ‘1989’ available to stream for premium customers only early in its sales window, but was knocked back by the streaming service.

Streaming is bad, especially when you've had a falling out with the people who run the servers.