By Amy Wang

Taylor Swift recently announced her highly publicized breakup with Spotify, the popular music-streaming platform. Not only has Swift denied Spotify streaming access to her new album, 1989, but she has also removed all her past albums from Spotify’s catalogue as well, leaving a Blank Space on over 19 million Spotify playlists. The reason?

Swift justified her actions by explaining that she doesn’t feel Spotify “fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists and creators of this music.” To that point, Spotify agrees that artists deserve recognition of their hard work. The company claims that it paid out $2 million to Swift in royalties for the past year and projects that Swift, as one of the most popular musicians in the world today, could earn over $6 million from Spotify alone. On the contrary, Scott Borchetta, CEO of Swift’s label Big Machine, claims that Swift earned less than $500,000 from Spotify streams in the U.S. for the past year. Continue reading →