Taylor Swift Yanks Catalog From Spotify

Taylor Swift, the nation's top selling artist, yesterday pulled all of her music off Spotify in one of the biggest moves in the long-simmering war between musicians and streaming music services.

The decision means that a large number of fans will have only one option to hear Swift's new album, "1989," and that's to buy it, which hundreds of thousands of people have already done. Music's most influential artist is simultaneously making a political statement and a savvy business move. More than 700,000 people bought "1989" in the first two days it went on sale last week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That already exceeds the year's biggest one-week seller, Coldplay's "Ghost Stories," which sold 383,000 in May. Music streaming services and file sharing have sharply cut into music sales for artists over the past couple of years. Many artists complain that the fees Spotify pays to record labels and music publishers, with a portion eventually funneled to musicians, is too small.

Spotify can't shake it off: "We were both young when we first saw you, but now there's more than 40 million of us who want you to stay, stay, stay. It's a love story, baby. Just say yes."