Just when you thought the whole Taylor Swift-Spotify skirmish was over and done with, the music streaming service has decided to revive the argument. This time, it's firing back with some cold, hard numbers.
Spotify published a blog post written by the company's CEO Daniel Ek today in which he defended the music streaming service and revealed just how much it supports the music industry monetarily. In the post, Ek said Spotify has paid more than $2 billion to the people behind the songs it streams, from labels to publishers to songwriters to artists. What's more, Ek also revealed that currently "payouts for a top artist like Taylor Swift" exceed $6 million a year. That is, before she decided to remove her entire catalog from the streaming service.
"Taylor Swift is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it," Ek wrote in the blog post. "So all the talk swirling around lately about how Spotify is making money on the backs of artists upsets me big time."
Spotify's response comes less than a week after Swift defended her decision to remove her entire catalog of music from the music streaming service. In an interview with Yahoo Music, Swift called Spotify "a grand experiment," one that she doesn't "feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators" of music.
"I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free," Swift told Yahoo Music.
In his blog post, Ek showed that this so-called "grand experiment" is working, at least for Spotify. The music streaming service now has 12.5 million subscribers out of its 50 million active users that pay $120 each year, which happens to be three times more than the average paying music consumer spent in the past, according to Ek. That's $1.5 billion in total, in case you were wondering.
However, the success of Swift's new album 1989 has shown that everything she's doing is clearly working for her. Swift's album quickly shot to No.1 after its release on Oct. 27, selling 1.287 million copies in its first week. This was the biggest sales week for an album in more than a decade. These first-week album sales alone would gross $12 million, although Swift would definitely not receive that full amount.
Since these shots have been fired, the ball is now in Swift's court. Will she defend her choice to remove her music from Spotify yet again? Will a song about Spotify conspicuously end up on her next album? Or, will she just keep maniacally laughing at the stir she has caused on the Internet and how much it is most likely driving sales for 1989? Probably a little bit of all three.
Image: Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images
