Spotify has defended its system after Taylor Swift pulled all of her material from the service.

The singer decided to remove all of her back catalogue from the streaming platform recently, claiming that it didn't reward artists and writers fairly.

Chief Executive Daniel Ek has now issued a lengthy blog post to defend Spotify's business model, stating that it has paid the industry $2bn (£1.2bn) so far.

He added: "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.

"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'."

Ek also moved to debunk further myths about Spotify's relative royalty rate and its impact on sales of physical music.

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