$2 Billion and Counting

[Commentary] Taylor Swift is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it.

Our whole reason for existence is to help fans find music and help artists connect with fans through a platform that protects them from piracy and pays them for their amazing work. 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. There are at least three big misconceptions out there about how we work, how much we pay, and what we mean for the future of music and the artists who create it.

Let’s take a look at them:

• Myth number one: free music for fans means artists don’t get paid.
• Myth number two: Spotify pays, but it pays so little per play nobody could ever earn a living from it.
• Myth number three: Spotify hurts sales, both download and physical.