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Taylor Swift exclusive video puts Spotify back in her favor

Taylor Swift's long-dormant feud with Spotify seems to be officially over, with the pop star launching a music video for "Delicate" only on Spotify.

Joan E. Solsman Former Senior Reporter
Joan E. Solsman was CNET's senior media reporter, covering the intersection of entertainment and technology. She's reported from locations spanning from Disneyland to Serbian refugee camps, and she previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. She bikes to get almost everywhere and has been doored only once.
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Joan E. Solsman
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Taylor Swift has participated more with Spotify gradually after keeping all her music off that service in 2014. 

 Isabel Infantes - PA Images

Taylor Swift has seen no shortage of feuds, but her tiff with Spotify seems to be officially over. And all Spotify had to do was turn around the entire music industry. 

A new video for Swift's song "Delicate" will debut Thursday night on Spotify, the pop star said in a tweet, before making a kissy face. (Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, retweeted her with three flame emoji.)

A few years ago, Spotify was persona non grata in Swift's world. She pulled her entire catalog of music off Spotify in 2014 just as her album "1989" was released. She didn't want to contribute her life's work to an experiment that doesn't fairly compensate artists, she said. 

But in the intervening years Spotify has grown to be the world's biggest streaming-music service by listeners, with 159 million monthly active users. It's also been instrumental in popularizing the subscription model, where people pay a monthly fee for all-you-can-eat tunes rather than buying individual digital downloads. Subscriptions have turned the music industry around to its first sales growth in more than a decade. 

Since pulling her music from Spotify, Swift has gradually allowed it back into her favor. She put her back catalog of songs back on the music-streaming service in June, and when she released her latest album "Reputation" to streaming services, Spotify got it at the same time as all its major competitors. 

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Spotify's rivals often pay to secure exclusives from big stars. Apple Music, for example, reportedly cut a multimillion-dollar deal with Drake to launch his 2016 album "Views" and spent $500,000 for Chance the Rapper to post his "Coloring Book" mixtape on its streaming music service first for two weeks.  

Spotify, however, has traditionally steered away from album exclusives, which it says are bad for the industry and frustrating for fans by limiting music's accessibility.

In instances where Spotify does put its might behind an artist's release, like a large campaign for Katy Perry last year, the service opted to offer free promotion to its audience of listeners -- the biggest of any streaming music service in the world -- rather than outright paying for exclusives. 

Spotify didn't provide terms of the "Delicate" video deal. The video, which was shot in one take, will be vertical, Spotify said in a blog post. It will be available at 9 p.m. PT on Spotify's mobile app for users in the US, UK, Sweden and Latin America.

Spotify will launch its IPO next week. 

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