We could be entering a new era for how fans watch music videos, as Taylor Swift has opted to temporarily withhold her new video for “Opalite” from YouTube in protest of the site no longer reporting its streams to the Billboard charts.
This latest video from The Life of a Showgirl, which stars Domhnall Gleeson, is currently streaming on Apple Music and Spotify. It won’t be on YouTube until Sunday (February 8), according to reports.
This is evidently because YouTube withdrew its streaming data from Billboard‘s charts as of January 16. “Billboard uses an outdated formula that weights subscription-supported streams higher than ad-supported,” YouTube’s Global Head of Music Lyor Cohen explained in a blog post back in December. “This doesn’t reflect how fans engage with music today and ignores the massive engagement from fans who don’t have a subscription.”
For the chart-obsessed Swift, this was enough for her to hold back the video from YouTube.
This isn’t the first time Swift has withheld her music from streaming platforms she disapproves of. Back in 2014, she took all of her music off Spotify in protest of its free tier, eventually returning her music to the service in 2017 (after Spotify became completely ethical?).
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