Taylor Swift and some other artists have recently pulled music from Spotify and other music outlets. The Universe asked students how their music consumption would change knowing that their favorite songs could be pulled from the music station they listen to.
“To be honest, I would just stop listening to an artist’s music. There is always other music out there. It makes sense as an artist because you need money for the music you make. But I wouldn’t spend money to buy the songs.” — Alyssa Gailey, Math education, Farmington
“Usually I listen to Spotify or whatever I have on my phone. If it’s not there, then iTunes has almost everything, so I would probably just get on iTunes.” — Brayden Smith, Business, Sandy
“That wouldn’t really affect how I listen to music. I’m not a super picky music person. I like a certain genre of music, and I’m listening to whoever is in that genre. I’m pretty open to whatever, and I’m not super music obsessed.” — Chayden Tibbitts, Finance, Idaho Falls, Idaho
“Taylor Swift is one of my favorite artists. Knowing there are people who don’t want their music on Spotify, I will be more inclined to use iTunes like I used to. I understand why artists do it because they don’t get anything from Spotify. I feel like they kind of deserve to get more.” — Chris Wahlquist, Economics, Mapleton
“I was annoyed that Taylor took it off ’cause she was in a lot of my favorite playlists. I usually search by artists; that’s how I usually listen to music, or I have my playlists that I already made. It changes things, and it makes me mad.” — Liz Pusey, computational studies, Denver, Colorado
“I don’t use Spotify very much. I mostly use it to find new music, and then once I find it I usually buy it on iTunes or Google Play or something like that. If I used Spotify most of the time it would be kind of annoying, but at the same time artists get like almost no money from the plays they get on Spotify, so it’s understandable from a business standpoint.” — Dallas Bitter, Computer science, Houston, Texas
“It will make me listen to artists’ music less, because what I listen to will be on Spotify. Essentially it could be hurting artists in that way, and it might change who I listen to all the time. When I come home I turn the radio on and listen to my music.” — Elizabeth Turley, Mechanical engineering, West Valley City
“I don’t have a lot of Taylor Swifts old songs, so I use Spotify to listen to them. When she pulled her songs off I didn’t really listen to Spotify any more.” — Janine Swart, Business management, Apex, North Carolina