Taylor Swift Pulls All Her Music From Spotify

Taylor Swift has pulled all of her songs from Spotify without giving an explanation - setting up a struggle between the industry's most popular artist and the music streaming giant.

Spotify said the singer's management asked it to take her music off the service late last week - days after the release of her new album 1989.

The move means Swift's five albums and hits including Shake It Off - the most-played song on Spotify last week - are no longer available to the site's 40 million users.

The Swedish firm tried to shake off the snub with a good-humoured statement, saying: "We love Taylor Swift, and our more than 40 million users love her even more - nearly 16 million of them have played her songs in the last 30 days, and she’s on over 19 million playlists.

"We hope she'll change her mind and join us in building a new music economy that works for everyone.

"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.

"That's why we pay nearly 70% of our revenue back to the music community.

"PS - 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 decision means fans can only listen to Swift's latest album - tipped to sell more than one millon copies in its first week - legally if they download it from services such as iTunes and Google Play.

Swift briefly pulled her 2012 album Red from Spotify around the time it came out, although she did not remove her entire catalogue and it eventually appeared on Spotify.

Earlier this year, Swift wrote in the Wall Street Journal that artists should fight to be paid what they are worth.

She wrote: "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."

The 24-year-old star has made £178m ($284m) since 2009, according to the Forbes Celebrity 100 list.

Music streaming services and file sharing have sharply cut into profits for artists, with album sales down 14% this year, according to Nielsen Soundscan.

Some bands, such as The Beatles and AC/DC have kept their music off Spotify and others, including Radiohead's Thom Yorke and the Black Keys have complained that the fees Spotify pays to record labels and music publishers are too small.

Spotify insists the money for artists improves as more users sign up to premium paid-for subscriptions.