Taylor Swift "only made $500,000" on Spotify last year, actually

Is that the sound of the world’s tiniest violin we can hear in the distance?

Taylor Swift only made $496,044 from Spotify streams in the US last year, her label boss has stated – a figure drastically smaller than the amount Spotify has suggested the pop star receives.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said earlier this week that the label of a ‘top artist’ of Swift’s popularity could expect to receive $6 million this year from streaming, and more as the service grows. But Scott Borchetta, CEO of the Nashville-based Big Machine, said his label had made more from streaming Swift’s videos on Vevo than it had from putting her music on Spotify.

A Spotify spokesperson told TIME that the total payout for Swift’s streaming over the past 12 months globally was $2 million. It’s worth pointing out that the country-turned-pop star didn’t actually release an album in 2013, so her stream count would presumably have been far lower.

Spotify also says been increasing its payouts exponentially as new users sign up. “The more we grow, the more we pay artists, and we’re growing like crazy,” said Jonathan Prince, Spotify’s global head of communications and public policy. “We paid Taylor’s label and publisher roughly half a million dollars in the month before she took her catalogue down—without even having 1989 on our service—and that was only going to go up.”

Borchetta’s statement is the latest update to the war of words between Swift and Spotify, which kicked off last week when she pulled her entire catalogue from the service.

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