The ruckus caused by Taylor Swift’s decision to withdraw her entire catalog from Spotify’s streaming music service has probably gotten more ink and pixels in the past two weeks than the off-year elections. We’re talking about pop music here, and millions of dollars, and what could be more important than that?

In a Thursday interview with Yahoo! Music, Swift said:

If I had streamed the new album, it’s impossible to try to speculate what would have happened. But all I can say is that music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment. And I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music.

The head of Swift’s label, Big Machine, is Scott Borchetta, and he had this to say in a Friday interview with Nikki Sixx:

We never wanted to embarrass a fan. If this fan went and purchased the record, CD, iTunes, wherever, and then their friends go, ‘Why did you pay for it? It’s free on Spotify.’ We’re being completely disrespectful to that superfan who wants to invest.

Invest? More like “pay through the nose.” Borchetta goes on:

We determined that her fan base is so in on her, let’s pull everything off of Spotify, and any other service that doesn’t offer a premium service. Now if you are a premium subscriber to Beats or Rdio or any of the other services that don’t offer just a free-only, then you will find her catalogue.

Could that be why Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) bought Beats, to get an exclusive deal with Taylor Swift? In the immortal almost-words of Mark Knopfler, “Money for nothin’ and your chicks [NOT] free.”

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