requisite for happiness What is the answer to a long and happy existence in this world of ours? I think I found it long ago in a passage from the book, Genesis, which caught my eyes while I was thumbing through my Bible.

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She said she did not believe it "fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators" of songs.

But Mr Ek said Spotify was music's biggest driver of growth.

He noted that 12.5 million of its 50 million active members were paying subscribers, and highlighted that a popular alternative, piracy, did not pay artists at all.

"You can't look at Spotify in isolation - even though Taylor can pull her music off Spotify (where we license and pay for every song we've ever played), her songs are all over services and sites like YouTube and Soundcloud, where people can listen all they want for free," he added.

"To say nothing of the fans who will just turn back to pirate services... and sure enough, if you looked at the top spot on the Pirate Bay last week, there was [Taylor Swift's new album] 1989."

YouTube and Soundcloud do not automatically offer the option to download and listen to music offline, as is the case for the Spotify app's paying subscribers - although there are third-party tools that offer this function.
Taylor Swift Taylor Swift's song Shake it Off had been one of Spotify's most played tracks until its removal

One expert said the reference to piracy was misleading.德善健髮

"Spotify has done a fantastic job of giving the music industry's most valuable customers a new way of consuming music that is better value for them than buying downloads," said Mark Mulligan, editor of the Music Industry Blog.

"But I don't think it has done much to compete with piracy to be honest."
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Mr Ek aims to demolish three "myths" in his essay:

    That Spotify's "free" service means artists are not paid - he says the free service shares part of its advertising revenues and that 80% of its subscribers started as free users
    That Spotify pays so little per play that no-one can earn a living from it - he says that a track listened to half a million times pays out between $3,000 to $4,000 (£1,890 to £2,520), which was more than other streaming services and radio stations offered
    That Spotify hurts sales of music - he says that downloads are 鬼剃頭