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Scott Borchetta Tells Time That Spotify Paid Taylor Swift 'Less Than $500,000' In The Past 12 Months
November 13, 2014 at 3:53 AM (PT)
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If you thought we'd heard the last of the heated exchange between TAYLOR SWIFT's camp and SPOTIFY -- you'd be wrong.
TUESDAY (NET NEWS 11/11), SPOTIFY CEO DANIEL EK took to the company blog to address TAYLOR SWIFT’s decision to remove her albums from the streaming service. He wrote, "TAYLOR SWIFT is absolutely right: Music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it. We 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."
EK continued, "QUINCY JONES posted on FACEBOOK that 'SPOTIFY is not the enemy; piracy is the enemy'. You know why? Two numbers: Zero and Two Billion. Piracy doesn’t pay artists a penny -- nothing, zilch, zero. SPOTIFY has paid more than two billion dollars to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists. A billion dollars from the time we started SPOTIFY in 2008 to last year and another billion dollars since then. And that’s two billion dollars’ 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 -- we’re working day and night to recover money for artists and the music business that piracy was stealing away."
Now, in an interview with TIME MAGAZINE, BIG MACHINE CEO SCOTT BORCHETTA refutes that, saying "TAYLOR SWIFT has been paid less than $500,000 in the past 12 months for domestic streaming of her songs."
The report notes, "according to BORCHETTA, the actual amount his label has received in return for domestic streams of SWIFT’s music -- $496,044 -- is drastically smaller than the amount SPOTIFY has suggested the artist receives. That sum represents only a portion of the amount paid out by the streaming service," and added "his label had made more from streaming TAYLOR SWIFT’s videos on the video site VEVO than it has from putting her music on SPOTIFY."

