Ed Sheeran may want to thank his friend Taylor Swift for pulling her music off of Spotify. The music streaming service listed Sheeran as its most streamed artist for 2014.
Spotify announced that its listeners played the British singer-songwriter's music more than 860 million times. Sheeran's latest album "X" also received the most plays for any album on the service.
Katy Perry topped the list as the most streamed female artist. Her song "Dark Horse" was the fourth most played behind Pharrell Williams' "Happy" (No. 1), Clean Bandit's "Rather Be" featuring Jess Glynne (No. 2) and "Summer" by Calvin Harris (No. 3).
The song "Wake Me Up" by Avicii holds the record most plays in Spotify's history. The song has been streamed more than 300 million times since its release in June 2013.
Spotify has more than 50 million active users in 58 markets. More than 20 percent of users (12.5 million) are paid subscribers.
Swift chose to pull her entire catalogue from the music streaming service in November. She doesn't believe Spotify "fairly compensates" the artists who contribute their work.
"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," the 24-year-old singer told Yahoo Music. "And I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free."
Spotify claims it has paid out more than $2 billion to "labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists" since the service launched in 2008, according to CEO Daniel Ek. Swift was set to collect more than $6 million from the streaming service if she had kept her music up.
