Not from Spotify.
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Taylor Swift shocked fans and industry insiders this morning when she pulled all of her albums from the popular music-streaming service Spotify. But it wasn't the first time Swift demonstrated that she apparently doesn't think much of streaming — her latest album, 1989, was never released to streaming services and her 2012 album, Red, wasn't available to stream until months after its release.
"Music is art, and art is important and rare," she wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal earlier this year defending the value of music in the internet age. "Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for."
Swift, of course, is coming from a special vantage point. In March of this year, Billboard named her the highest-paid musician in America, with estimated 2013 earnings of nearly $40 million. While leaving Spotify may be a blow to her pro-streaming fans, it's not likely to put a dent in that hefty bottom line.
Here's where Taylor makes her real money from, in ascending order of estimated value.
While Spotify's formula for paying royalties is more complicated than a simple pay per stream, rights holders generally make between $.006 and $.0084 per stream. Rates at other streaming services like Rdio and Beats Music are comparable.
From keychains to sweatshirts, there's a thriving industry of Swift-branded merchandise. Billboard estimates she sells $17 of merchandise per ticket at her shows, helping bring in an additional eight figures per year.
