Last November, Taylor Swift and Jason Aldean removed their music from Spotify, the world’s leading music streaming service. Although Aldean removed only his most recent album, “Old Boots, New Dirt,” Swift opted to remove her entire catalog. Fellow country artists Justin Moore and Brantley Gilbert (both signed to label Big Machine, along with Swift) soon followed T-Swizzle’s lead.

Each of these artists pulled their music for the same reason that acts like Bob Seger, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and Beyoncè have notoriously kept their music off of streaming services over the years – there’s simply not enough cash to be made from streaming alone. Swift shared her thoughts in a July Wall Street Journal column.

“Music is art, and art is important and rare,” Swift wrote. “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.”

Swift, the second highest-earning female artist last year, made $496,044 from domestic streams in 2014–less than a fraction of a cent per play. Scott Borchetta, CEO of Big Machine, said the label earned more money streaming video on Vevo. Swift’s newest album, triple platinum certified “1989,” sold 1.287 million copies in its first week of release after she pulled her music.

Yet Spotify’s leadership remains resolute that its artists are fairly compensated.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a blog post responding to Swift’s removal of her music, “That’s two billion dollars’ worth of listening [which Spotify has paid out to artists since its inception] that would have happened with zero or little compensation to artists and songwriters through piracy or practically equivalent services if there was no Spotify – we’re working day and night to recover money for artists and the music business that piracy was stealing away.”