![](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/a\/a0\/Spotify.svg\/265px-Spotify.svg.png\")
Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek has responded to Taylor Swift\u2019s decision to remove her albums from the streaming service with a blog post tackling what he describes as the \u201cmyths\u201d of streaming music. \u201cWe started Spotify because we love music and piracy was killing it. So all the talk swirling around lately about how Spotify is making money on the backs of artists upsets me big time,\u201d wrote Ek. <\/p>\n
In his post, Ek announced that Spotify now has 50 million active users, with 12.5 million of them paying for a monthly subscription. That\u2019s up from 40 million and 10 million respectively in May 2014. He added that Spotify has now paid out more than $2bn in royalties to labels and publishers.<\/p>\n
\u201cA billion dollars from the time we started Spotify in 2008 to last year and another billion dollars since then. And that\u2019s two billion dollars\u2019 worth of listening that would have happened with zero or little compensation to artists and songwriters through piracy or practically equivalent services if there was no Spotify,\u201d wrote Ek.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I hear stories about artists and songwriters who say they\u2019ve seen little or no money from streaming and are naturally angry and frustrated, I\u2019m really frustrated too. The music industry is changing \u2013 and we\u2019re proud of our part in that change \u2013 but lots of problems that have plagued the industry since its inception continue to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ek trained his sights on a lack of transparency within the music industry, referring to the $2bn payouts figure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf that money is not flowing to the creative community in a timely and transparent way, that\u2019s a big problem. We will do anything we can to work with the industry to increase transparency, improve speed of payments, and give artists the opportunity to promote themselves and connect with fans,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Ek also defended Spotify\u2019s \u201cblend\u201d of free and subscription music, with Swift having removed her albums because the company refused to only make them available to its paying subscribers.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur free service drives our paid service,\u201d he wrote. \u201cHere\u2019s the key fact: more than 80% of our subscribers started as free users. If you take away only one thing, it should be this: No free, no paid, no two billion dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ek also claimed that a top artist like Taylor Swift can expect to earn $6m a year from Spotify streams; criticised YouTube and SoundCloud for their lack of payments to artists for every stream on their services; and cited the likes of Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, Calvin Harris and Daft Punk as examples of artists who have sold lots of albums without windowing their releases from Spotify.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s the thing I really want artists to understand: Our interests are totally aligned with yours. Even if you don\u2019t believe that\u2019s our goal, look at our business. Our whole business is to maximize the value of your music. We don\u2019t use music to drive sales of hardware or software. We use music to get people to pay for music,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re getting fans to pay for music again. We\u2019re connecting artists to fans they would never have otherwise found, and we\u2019re paying them for every single listen. We\u2019re not just streaming, we\u2019re main<\/em>streaming now, and that\u2019s good for music makers and music lovers around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Ek\u2019s blog post means we have now heard from all the main parties involved in the Taylor Swift removal, as well as from some interested observers.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Source: The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek has responded to Taylor Swift\u2019s decision to remove her albums…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}