Taylor Swift made at least $280,000 on Spotify in 1 month with 1 song

Pulling her entire catalog from music-streaming service Spotify may well have been a good business decision for Taylor Swift — her new album, 1989, is selling like, well, hit records used to sell before the internet (she just crossed the 2 million album sales mark, after three weeks). But while those albums and its singles will earn her millions, she didn't fare too shabbily on Spotify, at least by normal human standards.

According to Time's calculations, Swift pulled in between $280,000 and $390,000 from just one single on Spotify, "Shake It Off," in the month of October alone, before she yanked her songs. Swift won't get all that money — some amount will go to her record label, Big Machine, her music publisher, and her co-songwriters, for example — but she'll get a large chunk of it, very likely more than you'll earn all year.

Spotify's payout formula is not public, but it says it paid Swift and her people $2 million in global streaming over the past 12 months; Big Machine says it has received just under $500,000 for U.S. streaming. Go visit Time to see what other top artists made from Spotify this year (or any month this year). And if you're interested in how people make money in the music industry, I took a stab at breaking it down here.

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