Billy Bragg on Taylor Swift's Spotify Boycott: She's Sold Her Soul to Google

Billy Bragg offered his view on Taylor Swift's decision to remove her music from Spotify. The British musician criticized the 24-year-old superstar in a lengthy Facebook post on Tuesday, November 18, calling her move "nothing but a corporate power play."

Bragg claimed that YouTube's new service Music Key was the real reason why Swift left Spotify. He quoted Swift's statement about how music shouldn't be free and said if she's really concerned about the value of music, she should be removing her material from YouTube as well, "not cozying up to it."


"These worthy sentiments have been somewhat undermined by Swift making her new album and back catalog available on Google's new Music Key streaming service... which also offers listeners a free service alongside a premium subscription tier [like Spotify]," he explained.

"She should just be honest with her fans and say 'sorry, but Sergey Brin gave me a huge amount of money to be the headline name on the marquee for the launch of You Tube Music Key and so I've sold my soul to Google,' " he continued.

"Google are going after Spotify and Taylor Swift has just chosen sides. That's her prerogative as a savvy businesswoman - but please don't try to sell this corporate power play to us as some sort of altruistic gesture in solidarity with struggling music makers," he added.

Swift's rep has responded to Bragg's post, saying that his claims aren't true. The rep told NME, "Taylor Swift has had absolutely no discussion or agreement of any kind with Google's new music streaming service."