It's a debate that's been going on for months now, but it seems like no matter how many musicians take their music off Spotify, there's just no stopping the streaming site, because the firm have now revealed that they've now hit a whopping 60 million active users, including 15 million paying subscribers.
Taylor Swift caused chaos towards the end of last year when she pulled her entire back catalogue from Spotify following the release of her brand new album 1989. However, despite T-Swiz's opinion meaning a helluva lot in the music world, it seems like people have still made that decision to go ahead and stream their fave music anyway, because the site added 10 million new users in the last months of 2014.
15 million of those were paying subscribers, which has boosted the figures up from 12.5 million in early November - which was basically the height of Taylor's debate. Admittedly, the sales figures will have been boosted quite heavily with people buying Christmas gifts etc, over the past few months, but it's still quite a number, isn't it?
Spotify now have 60 MILLION active users (Spotify)
A short blog post on the site read: "We had an amazing 2014 at Spotify and owe it all to you, the music fans who listen, discover, share and celebrate music and artists with us every day of the year. And before 2014 turned into 2015, we reached 15 million subscribers and 60 million active users!"
They then added: "So as we set off into the new year, we want to send a giant thank you to all of you. We can't wait for the year in music ahead!" The firm even added a celebratory playlist to the post that you can listen to here.
Taylor Swift has had a fair few opinions on music streaming (WENN)
So, it seems like it's a win win situation really, and neither Spotify nor Taylor lost out, despite the contrasting opinions. 1989 became the fastest selling album of the DECADE and also became her third to sell over a million copies in its first week of release. Taylor has quietened down a little now in terms of her thoughts about Spotify, with one of her last digs happening at the American Music Awards, when she accepted the gong for the Dick Clark Award for Excellance.
“To the fans who went out and bought over a million copies of my last three albums, what you did by going out and investing in music and albums is you're saying you believe in the same thing I believe in - that music is valuable and that music should be consumed in albums and albums should be consumed as art and appreciated," Swift said, during her acceptance speech.
