Taylor Swift’s return to streaming earns $400k in first 12 days

Taylor Swift’s return to streaming this month has yielded more than 51 million streams and generated close to nearly half a million dollars.

An estimate by Billboard has sale-equivalent streams of her catalogue on the likes of Spotify, Pandora, Tidal and Amazon earning $412,000 in the first 12 days.

Swift left the streaming services (except for the subscription-only Apple Music) in 2014 over their royalty rates.

Spotify’s ad-based rates paid artists $.0009 per stream while their premium rates paid $.0063. 

Whether the timing was designed to tweak Katy Perry and her fans on her new album release day or not, some commentators have suggested that the decision to return to the previously shunned platforms may have been influenced Spotify has upped its rates to $.0015 per ad-based stream. 

But there is also the thinking that sales of her five albums have tapered off, and a highly-publicised surprise return to streaming was just the ticket to boost the flagging numbers.

Her most recent album 1989 has jumped back into the US Top 200 to #31 from #191 – unprecedented for a record that was released 130 weeks ago and has sold 10 million worldwide and 6 million in the United States alone.

After several weeks of flat sales, 1989 registered a 29% in overall sales and 59% in digital sales. 

Of the $400k earned in streaming, master recordings are split to about $354,000 (most of which goes to her label Big Machine) and $64,000 to her publisher.

But the singer, whose estimated personal fortune is valued at $280 million, will also get a sizeable chunk. 

She’s widely expected to release a new album at the end of 2017 and do a world tour next year.