Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has responded to Taylor Swift's criticism that artists don't make money by adding their songs to the streaming service.

In a blog post written by Ek and other members of the Spotify team, he outlined the service has paid out $2 billion to artists since its launch, $1 billion of which was paid out this year alone.

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Ek claims that while Spotify might be lower than iTunes and other traditional media, it is far better than the alternative: piracy. He also makes the bold claim that Spotify directly affects the piracy rate of a single or album.

Spotify may be better than piracy when it comes to income, but for an artist of Taylor Swift's stature, the results are interesting. Some analysts claim big artists who do not use Spotify can receive more attention through traditional sales, thus boosting sales.

Even though piracy rates might get higher, so will traditional sales, much higher than the rate Spotify is paying for 10 or even 100 listens. This is part of Spotify's business model, allowing users to listen to unlimited music, and paying a small portion of the monthly subscription to artists.

It seems to be working for the Sweden-based music service; after a few years of no profit, the company broke even in 2013 and has been growing ever since. It has since updated its rates for artists, making it even more useful to be on the service.

Taylor Swift is not the first big artist to claim Spotify is bad for the industry. Adele and Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney have both taken issue with the service, due to the poor payment structure not being valuable to large artists.

For independent musicians, Spotify appears to be a great place to create brand identity, with less people paying for iTunes music than ever before. Even Apple has taken interest, with iTunes Radio and now Beats Music, its own music streaming service.

Spotify could have paid $6 million this year for Taylor Swift's songs, but this is apparently less than what she thinks she could have made otherwise. And she may be right; however, there are not a lot of musicians in her fortunate position.

TagsSpotify, Daniel Ek, taylor swift, Music streaming