Spotify, a music streaming service going for broke

Since US pop empress Taylor Swift pulled her catalogue from the service, Spotify has regularly trumpeted its self-reported payout (1.8 billion euros) to the music industry over the past seven years. The money has turned music executives from sceptics into believers in a model -- based on free music access coupled with paid subscriptions for an ad-free service -- that record labels rebuffed when Spotify started pitching it to them in 2007. "We explained we wanted to give the music away for f