As of Friday December 1, Taylor Swift’s newest album ‘Reputation ‘ will be available on most major music streaming services.
Billboard reports Swift’s sixth album, released three weeks ago, was supposed to be available in digital and physical formats only. After topping the Billboard 200 chart for the past two weeks, the album has sold more than 1.45 million units in the U.S., making it the year’s biggest album debut and giving it the largest sales week of 2017.
Read: After Just One Week, Taylor Swift’s ‘Reputation’ Is the Top-Selling Album of 2017
Since its release on Nov. 10, Reputation had not been available for legal streaming anywhere on the Internet, and Swift and her team had not publicly announced when they planned to release the album to streaming services. News broke of Reputation’s release on Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming platforms when her fans in Australia and the Philippines began sharing screenshots online on Thursday.
UPDATE 📲 #reputation is NOW available for streaming on @Spotify in Australia and New Zealand and will be available in the US tonight at midnight (12am ET on December 1st) 🎶 https://t.co/MgKDbVdzwE pic.twitter.com/p8GGv7RpkY
— Taylor Swift Updates (@SwiftNYC) November 30, 2017
https://twitter.com/Mikeytocopolous/status/936300668402282496
Billboard has since independently confirmed with three sources that the album will go live globally on Friday, Dec. 1.
The delay follows Swift’s very public doubts about the ethics of streaming services, which meant the pop star’s first five albums were only added to Spotify in June. Swift has said she believes that if there is a high demand for certain music, it should be more expensive than other music: “I think that people should feel that there is a value to what musicians have created, and that’s that,” Swift told Time in 2014.
Swift didn’t comment on her change of heart towards Spotify, but Vox notes the move follows a contract that Universal Music Group (Swift’s label) negotiated with Spotify to enable artists to keep new albums off the level one version of the platform, which is ad-supported and free to users. Content released under the Universal’s contract remains exclusive to the premium tier for paid subscribers, and is only available a minimum of two weeks after the initial release.
The new album and its highly likely tour will only add to Swift’s sizeable net worth, which continues to grow as it feeds on sold-out performances, rapidly-selling records and even a range of emojis, called Taymojis.
