Taylor Swift's record label rebuffs Spotify's $6M claim

Taylor Swift's record label, Big Machine, is rejecting Spotify's claims that the Amercian pop star missed out on a $6 million US paycheque after she pulled her music from the streaming service.

• Taylor Swift poised to break sales record, snubs Spotify

Big Machine CEO Scott Borchetta told Time magazine that Swift had been paid less than $500,000 in the last 12 months for having her songs streamed domestically on Spotify.

Spotify spokesman Jonathan Prince told the magazine they paid Swift $2 million in the same period, globally.

"The more we grow, the more we pay artists, and we're growing like crazy," said Prince.

Either way, the figures represent a fraction of what the 24-year-old mega-star is likely making. In June, Forbes pegged Swift's yearly earning, so far, at $64 million. And that was before her new album, 1989, came out.

The value of art

The Swift-Spotify dispute started last week when the pop star pulled her entire music catalogue from the subscription service just as 1989 was rocketing to the top of the charts and pulling in record-breaking sales. 

The singer, who is the only artist so far this year to have a platinum record, told Time that she tried Spotify, but "didn’t like the way it felt."

• Taylor Swift's new album, 1989, sells 1.287 million copies in 1st week

"I think there should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify," she said.

"Everybody’s complaining about how music sales are shrinking, but nobody’s changing the way they’re doing things."

'Two billion dollars' paid

Spotify's CEO, Daniel Ek, has defended criticism that his company is making "making money on the backs of artists" in a recent blog post.

"Spotify has paid more than two billion dollars to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists [since Spotify started in 2008]," Ek wrote.

"At our current size, payouts for a top artist like Taylor Swift (before she pulled her catalogue) are on track to exceed $6 million a year, and that’s only growing."

The back-and-forth comes during a time of major upheaval in the music industry.

• YouTube launches ad-free music subscription service
• Spotify streaming music service launches in Canada

Album sales in the U.S. are at an all-time low and digital services, like Spotify and YouTube's recently announced music subscription service, prove that streaming is getting a foothold in the consumer market.