Universal Music Group confirmed Wednesday that it would be selling half of its 3 percent stake in Spotify — a deal worth as much as $1.4 billion based on the streaming service’s valuation as of April 29 — and thanks in part to Taylor Swift, all of UMG’s roster of artists stand to be cashing in too.
How Swift has anything to do with this windfall is a bit complicated, and goes all the way back to the major record labels’ original licensing agreements with Spotify from the late 2000s, which got the companies stock in the then-fledgling streaming service. Credit where it’s due, as Music Business Worldwide reported back in 2016, with no legal requirement to do so, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Group had both committed to doling out some of the profits to the artists if they sold their Spotify stock. UMG confirmed it’d do
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