Taylor Swift pulled her catalogue from Spotify last week, and the streaming giant's co-founder Daniel Elk responded earlier this week saying that the 1989 songstress would have made $6 million from Spotify streaming by the end of the year. Now Swift's label boss, Scott Borchetta, is claiming in an interview with TIME that last year his label only made $496,044 from her domestic Spotify streams, a number drastically smaller than what Elk suggested they could expect this year. According to a Spotify representative, the global payout last year was $2 million.
Spotify's global head of communications and public policy, Jonathan Prince, told TIME that the more the streaming site grows, the more they will be able to pay artists. They claim they are "growing like crazy." They say they paid Swift's label a half million dollars in the month before she took her music of the service — without even having 1989 on there.
However, Swift and Borchetta both say that removing her music was part of a larger message.
"The facts show that the music industry was much better off before Spotify hit these shores," Borchetta told TIME. "Don't forget this is for the most successful artist in music today. What about the rest of the artists out there struggling to make a career? Over the last year, what Spotify has paid is the equivalent of less than 50,000 albums sold."
Still Elk claims that the service is bringing in dollars that would have otherwise been lost to piracy.
Swift's latest album has sold nearly 1.7 million copies nationwide in its first two weeks on sale, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That's more than any other artist today.
Borchetta says that Swift has made more from streaming her videos on VEVO than putting her albums on Spotify.
What do you think? Did Swift do the right thing in removing her music? Sound off in the comments section below!
