The biggest relationship scandal in Taylor Swift’s life right now is with Spotify

In today’s digital age, it’s tough to sell an album. Piracy is running rampant, digital download is easier than ever and streaming is the norm. Physically owning a CD is becoming an archaic practice, reserved only for obscure indie bands whose merchandise is at a concert you’ve attended, or for last minute christmas presents. But, in massive numbers, fans of Taylor Swift, who call themselves “Swifties” are standing in line for their hard copies of Taylor Swift’s new album to show their support.

The support was staggering. Swift’s new masterpiece, 1989 became the first platinum album of the year, and is likely to be the only such album of 2014. In its first week, it sold over 1.28 million copies, breaking every first week of sales record since 2002. In has since gone on to sell more than 1.7 million copies.

In the glow of such phenomenal sales, it came as a bit of a shock when Taylor’s music disappeared from popular music streaming site, Spotify. But the decision wasn’t made lightly and had been some time in the making. Months ago, Taylor Swift wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal, making known her unease about music streaming.

In the op-ed piece, she stated, “Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.”

Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, issued a statement in response saying, “Taylor Swift is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it,” he writes. “We started Spotify because we love music and piracy was killing it.”

It’s true that Spotify is working to combat the illegal downloading of music. They maintain that their streaming service is a successful alternative to piracy and that combating piracy is their main goal. Ek continued, “Piracy doesn’t pay artists a penny – nothing, zilch, zero. Spotify has paid more than $2 billion to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists.”

Spotify claims that Taylor Swift potentially would have made 6 million dollars next year from streaming her music on their site and that, last year, Taylor received 2 million dollars in royalties from their site. However, these numbers do not match the numbers Taylor’s representatives say she was actually awarded. The 2 million dollars Spotify allegedly doled out to Taylor Swift last year is actually, Big Machine Records reports, less than $500,000.

But the thing is, Taylor’s fans are supportive of her decision. True Swifties don’t pirate. In a show of extreme loyalty, when 1989 was leaked by supposedly by hackers in France, three days prior to its release date, fans refused to pirate the music and, instead, waited patiently and in solidarity for its scheduled release, even going so far as to publicly denounce anyone who chose to download the tracks illegally.

Taylor asked her fans for their support and they rallied. She enticed them with exclusive photos and extra songs with the physical CD and they bit. The marketing for her album has made purchasing CDs cool again. In an interview with TIME magazine, she said, “Everybody’s complaining about how music sales are shrinking, but nobody’s changing the way they’re doing things. They keep running towards streaming, which is, for the most part, what has been shrinking the numbers of paid album sales.”

Spotify has publicly pleaded with Taylor Swift to reconsider their split, posting playlists and making statements and writing blog posts reminiscent of a pining ex who won’t move on from a bad break up. “Taylor, we were both young when we first saw you, but now there’s more than 40 million of us who want you to stay, stay, stay. It’s a love story, baby, just say, Yes,” The Spotify Team wrote on November 3, quoting two of her hit songs.

But Taylor Swift isn’t biting. She addressed the conflict with Yahoo! saying, “All I can say is that music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment and I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music.”

Taylor Swift might just save the music industry yet.