Many people within the music industry, as well as her fans, were surprised when Taylor Swift decided to remove all of her music from the online streaming service Spotify in November, but what is more surprising is the positive reaction she has had from her fellow recording artists.

Taylor Swift
Swift removed all her music from Spotify in November

Swift went to war Spotify over inadequate royalty payments, and after her latest studio album '1989' sold over 1.2 million copies in its first week of release alone, she is living proof that music stars do not need the aid of streaming services to sell their records.

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After seemingly being triumphant, the 25-year-old singer has now heated the debate over the amount of royalty payments artists receive in the digital age, and when talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Swift expressed how she never expected the outpouring of support she received.

"I didn't think that it would be shocking to anyone," she said. "With as many ways as artists are personalizing their musical distribution, it didn't occur to me that this would be anything that anyone would talk about. But I could never have expected so many text messages, emails and phone calls from other artists, writers and producers saying thank you."

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During an interview with Time magazine, titled 'The Power of Taylor Swift,' last month, the Grammy-winner elaborated on her bold career move and revealed that after trying Spotify, she "didn't like the way it felt."

Spotify

"I think there should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn't see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify," 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 have since claimed nearly 70% of their revenue is paid directly back to rightsholders in the form of royalty payments, but it only pays artists an average of "between $0.006 and $0.0084" per stream, according to the service's website. This is a dramatic decrease to what artists would earn selling digital albums and songs on services like iTunes.