Brian Mansfield

USA TODAY

Even as Taylor Swift prepared to officially become the first act to have three albums sell a million copies in one week, the singer broke up with Spotify on Monday, erasing her music from the popular streaming service.

At Swift and Big Machine Label Group's request, Spotify was forced to removed the 24-year-old's catalog from its library.

Swift's 1989 album, released last week, had never streamed on Spotify, though the single Shake It Off was the service's most-played track when it was pulled.

To persuade Swift to change her mind, Spotify launched a social media campaign using the hashtag #justsayyes, quoting a lyric from her 2008 hit Love Story. In a statement on its website about the singer's decision, the service said 16 million of its more than 40 million users had played her music in the past 30 days.

Big Machine and Swift have never been fans of Spotify. Swift held back her 2012 album Red from the service for 120 days, and fellow Big Machine artists Brantley Gilbert and Rascal Flatts kept their latest albums from streaming for 60 days.

Swift indicated how she views streaming in a July opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal. "Piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically," she wrote, while also pointing out that "people are still buying albums, but now they're buying just a few of them."

In its statement, Spotify said it pays nearly 70% of its revenue back to the music community. "We hope she'll change her mind and join us in building a new music economy that works for everyone," the statement read. "We believe fans should be able to listen to music wherever and whenever they want, and that artists have an absolute right to be paid for their work and protected from piracy."

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, streaming music services grew 28% in the first half of this year, generating enough revenue to offset the decline of permanent downloads.



"Taylor Swift owns the zeitgeist this week," wrote music-industry blogger Bob Lefsetz in his newsletter Monday. "But Spotify owns the zeitgeist in the future. You might think it's Taylor Swift's world and we only live in it, but the truth is it's streaming music's world and we not only live in it, we love it!"

Big Machine Label Group declined to comment, and Swift's publicist could not be reached for comment.

Swift's 1989 is on track to become the first album released in 2014 to sell more than a million copies, a feat it likely achieved in just one week.

Official first-week sales total for 1989 will be available Wednesday. According to Billboard, industry forecasters expect that number to exceed 1.3 million, potentially passing the 1.319 million copies Britney Spears' Oops! … I Did It Again sold in 2000. It could be the largest sales week for an album since Eminem's The Eminem Show sold 1.322 million in 2002.

Last week's 200 top-selling albums sold a combined 1.57 million copies, according to SoundScan.

Swift also announced 58 North American and European dates for her 1989 World Tour on Monday, beginning May 20 in Bossier City, La.