Crazy Consumer Electronics World: Opinion: Taylor Swift is too smart for Spotify

According to reports, Taylor Swift is a somewhat of an idiot. The pop sensation's decision to pull her albums from Spotify means she's missing out on millions of dollars, and she's been depicted as a kind of singing King Canute trying to turn back the waves of musical progress.

Those reports are wrong.

If, like me, you've spent hours this week trying to get Taylor Swift tickets for your kids, you'll know that Swift and her management are fantastically good at making money. Between the fan club presale, the venue presale, the American Express presale, the Ticketmaster Platinum presale, the sponsor presale and the VIP ticket packages, it's never been easier to spend a frighteningly large sum of money on going to a gig.

Swift and her people are very smart. Streaming 1989 on Spotify wouldn't be. Here's why.

Like most things in the world, you can explain the problem with the help of the excellent 80s popsters The Human League. Their (Keep Feeling) Fascination was on the radio the other day, and I realised that I didn't own that particular slice of perfect pop - so I headed to iTunes to buy the band's best-of.

And then I remembered I had a Spotify account, so I streamed it from that instead. That decision still generates money for the band, but it's a fraction of what they'd get from a sale.

It's all part of the plan

Comparing streaming royalties to actual album sales is a tough business - I'll leave that to the excellent Ian Betteridge, who's posted a great analysis of some seriously bad reporting here - but the short version is this: artists such as Taylor Swift make a big pile of cash from album sales and a tiny amount from streaming, and if people can stream the record on Spotify most of them won't buy the albums.

The smart way to approach it would be to make the album download-only until interest wanes, then put it on Spotify so it'll generate money from individual listens. I'll be amazed if that isn't the plan here.

Had Swift's catalogue remained on Spotify, the streaming royalties would be a fraction of the money Swift's brought in from selling 1.3 million albums - and remember, that figure is for a single week's sales, and there will be many, many more in the weeks to come.

Taylor Swift is many things, but stupid isn't one of them.