Taylor Swift just pulled her music from Spotify, including her latest record 1989. The Shake It Off singer isn’t the first artist to pull her work from the music-streaming service. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has pulled his solo work from the site, too, claiming that “new artists you discover on Spotify will not get paid. Meanwhile shareholders will shortly be rolling in it.”
Artists are paid on a per-stream basis on Spotify. So a track that’s played 1 milion times will earn the artist about $6,078. Of course Spotify wishes to keep Swift and her fans – her music was played by more than 16 million users in the past 30 days. Other artists who can afford not to be on Spotify include The Beatles, AC/DC and Peter Gabriel.
