Spotify has garnered plenty of headlines recently, particularly following Taylor Swift\u2019s decision to pull her collection of music from the streaming service, but that\u2019s not slowing the company down. The firm said recently it now has more than 12.5 million subscribers, up from 10 million that it recorded in May of this year. Of course, Swift\u2019s decision was made more recently, though at those growth rates it seems unlikely to slow down Spotify\u2019s upward moving momentum.<\/p>\n
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek noted the milestone in a blog post on Tuesday discussing Swift\u2019s decision to pull her music catalog. \u201cTaylor Swift\u00a0is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it,\u201d Ek explained. \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<\/p>\n
Ek said his service has paid recording artists, labels, publishers and songwriters more than $2 billion while piracy pays them nothing, and that Spotify is actually combating piracy. \u201cWe 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 \u2013 that\u2019s our responsibility as a leader in this industry; and it\u2019s the right thing to do,\u201d Ek added.<\/p>\n
Ek addressed several myths in the industry, including some that suggest Spotify doesn\u2019t pay enough and that it actually hurts sales, but made some compelling arguments to the contrary. He said that a song played about 500,000 times on Spotify would pay the recording artists about $3,000 to $4,000, but the same song played once on a radio station in the United States with 500,000 listeners would pay them nothing. An artist like Taylor Swift, Ek said, would typically earn about $6 million a year from the service.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur interests are aligned with yours,\u201d Ek told the recording industry, noting that Taylor Swift\u2019s new album,\u00a01989,<\/em> is currently the number one most downloaded album on Pirate Pay. \u201cPeople\u2019s listening habits have changed \u00a0\u2013 and they\u2019re not going to change back.\u201d<\/p>\n