On Nov. 3, Taylor Swift took her music off of the popular streaming service Spotify. This has sparked debate in the music industry. Some people think that she is smart for doing this and that it will inspire people to go out and buy her albums. Other people think that all this is going to do is increase piracy.

Daniel Ek, Spotify CEO, released a statement on spotify.com about the situation. “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. 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.

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,” Ek said.

I totally agree with what Ek said. Streaming services like Spotify and Rdio do keep piracy down. The piracy rate costs the industry about $12.5 million a year, and when music is pirated, the artist gets nothing. When an artist has their music on a streaming site, they get money from the site and piracy goes down. I think Swift pulling her music from Spotify will cut her income by a lot.

According to a later part of Ek’s statement, Swift was on track to make $6 million this year just from Spotify. This is a substantial amount of money that she is potentially missing out on. I know that a good portion of the people who would stream will resort to pirating. That is (unfortunately) the way things go in this era. It certainly cuts down artists’ profits and it hurts the industry terribly. People will do this though if there’s no free way to hear music.

Nearly everybody wants Swift back on the popular streaming site. Even Spotify made a playlist titled “What to Play While Taylor’s Away”. Even if it’s not for her fans, she is missing out on a ton of profit and would be welcomed back with open arms.