Taylor Swift’s representative has confirmed that the music artist has reintroduced her work on streaming services including Spotify, Tidal and Amazon after removing her entire catalogue in 2014 due to financial concerns. Previously, Swift had exclusively allowed Apple music to stream her catalogue after the music platform agreed to pay artists royalties during its three-month free trial to the service. As of today, all of Swift’s work including 1989 was available to stream on all available services. Swift has been widely condemned for her apparent U-turn with many speculating that such a move was a deliberate attempt to draw attention away from the release of Katy Perry’s Witness which was also released on streaming services today. Recent coverage from the likes of Forbes were quick to highlight the ‘suspicious’ timing of such a move. A clear explanation of the decision remains to be seen from Swift’s camp with an official statement claiming that the move is a celebration of 1989 hitting ten-million sales.

Such news has followed emerging news concerning the feud between Swift and Perry; Perry recently confirmed rumours of such a dispute to James Cordon and also told NME that Swift is attempting to ‘assassinate [her] character’. Additionally, Perry’s song ‘Swish Swish’ has been rumoured to be a thinly-veiled attack on Swift with lyrics referring to her as ‘selfish’ and a ‘sheep’. The dispute appears to have arisen when a member of Swift’s team left to join Perry on tour.

However, whereas such a move has widely been considered as a petty marketing tool designed to undercut a fellow artist, many have pointed to the practical necessity of such a move. Ultimately, online streaming distribution helps to determine the chart positions with the Top 200, and 1989 has been at a disadvantage since its release by being excluded from the world’s largest streaming services. Following the reintroduction of Swift’s music onto music streaming services, 1989 sold 1,903 copies in the U.S. but received credit for 6,061 album sales, thanks to 1.6 million streams on Apple.

In other Taylor Swift related news, accounts have emerged of the artist’s infamous Best Female Video acceptance speech at the MTV VMAs; whilst speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, former MTV chief Van Toffler has described how Swift was ‘crying hysterically’ following Kanye West’s interruption on stage. This incident appears to have prompted another feud with a fellow musician after the rapper released his song ‘Famous’, which featured the lyric “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex, Why? I made that b—- famous.”