Taylor Swift: Creator of Rare, Important Art

[[File:Taylor Swift: Creator of Rare, Important Art - A Dose of Buckley|thumb|right|335 px|Buckley tries to let Taylor Swift in on a reality check regarding her recent complaint about Spotify not earning her enough revenue from sales of her multi-platinum album "1989".]]"Taylor Swift: Creator of Rare, Important Art" is episode #169 of comedy web series "A Dose Of Buckley" and was uploaded to the official website, as well as Youtube channel on November 16, 2014.
==Buckley's description==
Taylor Swift doesn't just complain about boy troubles...she also complains about not getting paid enough! Do you feel sympathetic toward the plight of a multi-millionaire?
==Transcript==
Imagine if there was a way for you to live for 4,000 years, but your body doesn't age past 24 so you'd always be healthy enough to work and earn money. In this world of science fiction, let's pretend inflation doesn't exist. Assuming you were able to average $50,000 a year for 4,000 years, you'd earn $200 million. $200 mill, and it would only take the average person 4,000 years to earn it. Well, in the real world (the one we live in now), it's estimated that Taylor Swift has already earned that much despite only having lived for 24 years. She's the first person to have an album that came out in 2014 to sell over a million copies and get certified platinum in the U.S. this year, which shows the state of the music industry seeing that it's fucking November and only ONE artist has managed to do it, and only 10 years ago 55 albums released ended up going platinum in the same year. But I tell you all of this so that you can decide for yourselves whether or not to feel sympathetic for poor T. Swizzle when I tell you about her latest plight. 
Taylor Swift recently pulled all of her music from Spotify, the streaming music service, because she's sick of the low royalties yielded from having her music on a service like this. The hard-luck young lady was only earning between $0.006 and $0.0084 per song being listened to. And she thinks this is bullshit. I have to reluctantly agree...despite thinking her music is awful, that seems like very little money. Some guy in his mom's basement recording himself playing video games and swearing can make $0.002 to $0.006 per view on YouTube. So a professional musician, as shitty as they might be, should probably earn a little bit more. But, how much is $0.006 per listen for Taylor Swift? According to Spotify, in a 1-month period, 16 million people listened to a Taylor Swift song. Now, you know Taylor Swift fans would never just listen to one fucking song nor would they listen to any one song once. Well, let's pretend that's what happened. 16 million people only listened to one Taylor Swift song each. That's $96,000 in a month. And if that's about average per month, $1.15 million a year. Again, ONLY at the lowest amount of money earned and only based on one song played once. Let's pretend that each only listened to two songs. That's $192,000 a month, 2.3 million a year. 
Taylor, I really wanna agree with you here. But when you're telling people (in this fucking economy no less), that a bare minimum of $96,000 a month isn't good enough for you, you're not earning enough from people hearing you gripe about your boy troubles, that makes it pretty fucking hard for someone to get on your side. Wanna know what makes it even harder? Statements like this: "Music is art, and art is important and rare. 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." You believe music is art? Since you're a musician, I wouldn't expect anything less and that's fine. I've argued this before that if you believe that any music is art, then ALL music is art. And regardless of it being art or not, all music is a product. That's basically what she just said, but..."Art is important and rare." No, some art is important and rare. An original Picasso, or Rembrandt, even Warhol or a Pollack if you like something more modern. These are rare, important pieces of art. Taylor Swift's "art" is mass-produced, created to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It's the equivalent of a print of dogs playing poker that you hang up in your guest bathroom to give your friends a quick laugh while they're throwing a piss. Does that mean you should just be allowed to have one for free? No, it has value. But its value is a lot less than rare, important art. As a content creator, I believe that if you put a fair price on something and someone wants that thing, it should be paid for. Piracy definitely hurts album sales, there's no questioning that. 
Going back to the start of this video, 55 albums released in 2004 went platinum in the same year. One did it this year, and analysts don't expect that number to change. "It has nothing to do with piracy, Buckley! It's that albums were better before and that's why people bought them." Don't fucking give me that! A goddamn Twista album was the first album to platinum in 2004. An Avril Lavigne album went platinum. Ashlee Simpson's "Autobiography" sold over a million fucking copies in 2004, and it did it in under 2 months! So don't fucking tell me that it has anything to do with the quality. Based on that logic, then, Taylor Swift's "1989" is the best, highest-quality album released this year. It has to be, right? Music sales would be better if the music was good. That's why albums used to sell! So this one must've sold well because it's really good, right? No! She just did the best job of convincing her fandom to give her money...because now it's no longer good enough to put an album out and expect that people would buy it. You have to assume everyone will just take to work and you have to try and convince them why they should pay to consume it. I get it. It adds a level of difficulty to earning money that doesn't really exist with other products. But in this case, they're not even stealing it! They're listening to it and then someone is giving Taylor Swift money for that. 
So, I'd like to be sympathetic, Ms. Swift, but when you personally earned $64 million last year on touring, albums, digital singles, and merch sales...when you make money by licensing your music to everyone and anyone who will pay for it...and when you're bitching about a service that pays you likely at LEAST $2 million a year, something your fans will be hard-pressed to earn in a lifetime, it's really hard to take you seriously. And why not pull your music from everywhere else? How much do you make every time someone watches your videos on YouTube or listens to your songs on the radio? Given my knowledge of both formats, I would bet less than Spotify is paying you. Ohhh...but that's seen as good advertising, right? Well, why is your art allowed to be consumed for free there and not paid for? Because if it's not free somewhere for people to preview it, no one will buy it. 
So, tread lightly, little girl. And if you need something to dry your eyes with after you're done crying about all that lost revenue, remember that you earned $2 a SECOND last year. I'm sure you have a few extra bills laying around to absorb those tears.