Taylor Swift removed her music from Spotify in 2014 because she believes artists should value their art and ensure people pay enough for it. She thinks Spotify does not provide sufficient recognition or compensation to artists. Fans had mixed reactions, with some understanding her viewpoint that streaming services reduce music sales revenue, while others called her money-hungry. Research shows artists generally earn much less from Spotify streams than digital downloads on iTunes. While Spotify paid $2 million for streams of Swift's music globally in a year, it's unclear how much she personally received after payments to her label and Universal.

1. Jake McMann
Taylor Swift – “Why I left Spotify”
“My art needs to be appreciated more”
In November 2014, Taylor Swift took a stand against Spotify Music and
removed her music from the popular music website. Now, for the first time
she talks exclusively to Listen!
In an interview with one of our reporters –
Taylor Swift, commented on her decision to
remove all of her music from Spotify, and
various streaming music. Taylor claims that
artists should value their art and make sure that
people are paying enough money for it – and
she believes that Spotify does not give enough
recognition, in artist attention as well in fees.
Swift has made it clear that Spotify could “hurt
music sales”. Spotify is a streaming service which
is available for free to users who listen to ads in
between music, and available without ads to
those who pay as little as £4.99 a month for a
premium subscription.
“[people] can still listen to my music if they get it
on iTunes” Taylor told Listen! On iTunes, music
can be bought as a single, or in an album for a
price set by the artist and the label. Fans have
had varied opinion on this matter, from one
angry fan tweeting “Does @TaylorSwift not want
her fans to listen to her music or something? All
of this just makes her seem money-hungry, does
she not have enough??” – to an understanding
fan tweeting “I totally understand @TaylorSwift’s
point of view, without paying for music we don’t
pay for it”.
"I didn't see that happening, perception-wise,
when I put my music on Spotify. Everybody's
complaining about how music sales are
shrinking, but nobody's changing the way
they're doing things. They keep running towards
streaming, which is, for the most part, what has
been shrinking the numbers of paid album
sales” – Taylor said to Listen!
Our research shows that artists general don’t
make nearly as much money by putting their
music on Spotify as they do selling digital
albums and songs on services like iTunes. 70%
of Spotify’s revenue goes to labels, this will
amount to about $1 billion this year – however
some artists feel like they don’t get a big
enough cut. The streaming service revealed last
year that it paid record labels an average of less
than a penny for each play, and that’s to the
label, not the artists – this would be even less.
Scott Borchetta, the CEO of Taylor Swift’s record
label ‘Big Machine’ told Listen!, that the label

2. Jake McMann
earned only $500,000 from domestic streaming
on Spotify in the past year. Spotify told Time
that the amount the service paid for streams of
Swift's music in the past year was actually $2
million if you account for global streams as well
as domestic.
But it's unclear how much of that money was
seen by Swift. Spotify paid the $2 million to
Universal, which holds the rights to Swift's music,
and then her label Big Machine got a cut.