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Spotify defends itself, says it has paid more than US$2 billion to labels, publishers and artists

By Kenny Yeo - on 12 Nov 2014, 10:41am

Spotify defends itself, says it has paid more than US$2 billion to labels, publishers and artists

Source: Spotify

Spotify has come under fire recently especially after Taylor Swift decided to pull all of her music off from the music streaming provider. Swift believes that Spotify is not paying artists fairly and called services like Spotify "a grand experiment".

Daniel Ek, Spotify's CEO, felt the need to defend the company's service and business. In a long post, he said that Spotify has thus far paid out more than US$2 billion to recording labels, publishers, songwriters and artists. Additionally, he said that top artists on Spotify could be paid as much as US$6 million a year.

He said, "At our current size, payouts for a top artist like Taylor Swift (before she pulled her catalog) are on track to exceed $6 million a year, and that’s only growing – we expect that number to double again in a year."

Ek also stated that today, Spotify enjoys around 50 million active users, of which around 12.5 million are paying subscribers who pay around US$120 a year. He also defended Spotify's business strategy to offer a free service and mentioned that 80% of its subscribers started out as free users.

It is a long read and he goes on to say more. If you are interested in music streaming (or maybe just Taylor Swift), hit the link below.

Source: Spotify

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