John Mayer applauded his ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift for using her popular voice to start a conversation about the value of music.  

"Artists need the person with the loudest voice to speak for them...I think that's a really cool thing for a musician to do," Mayer told MSNBC's Ronan Farrow in an interview. "Like two percent of the music industry has 80 percent of all the media about it. There's like four people who get all the press, and if any of those four people say, 'I want to speak for those people who would just never make this a story' ... The only reason we're talking about Taylor Swift taking Spotify on is because she's Taylor Swift!" 

Mayer said that people need to stop tip toeing around the topic of Taylor Swift around him because he is over the brief 2009 relationship. 

"And now I just go, 'Look, I can say the name Taylor Swift. She's an artist. I'm an artist. Let's just...everybody stop. Nobody's got an incurable cancer. We're rich people who get to live out our dreams. Let's just stop it...It's really about the longevity of all the work that goes together, and I'm just not interested in the things that won't last forever."