Mark Davis/Getty ImagesTaylor Swift performing.Taylor Swift was surprised by all the attention she got when she pulled her catalogue of music from Spotify - especially by how many people in the music industry reached out to thank her.
Swift told The Hollywood Reporter that 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."
THR named Swift one of its "rule breakers" of 2014.
In an interview with Time magazine last month, Swift elaborated on her decision to pull her music from the popular streaming service. She reiterated opinions she voiced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in July, saying that artists should value their art and make sure that people are paying enough money for it.
"Everybody's complaining about how music sales are shrinking, but nobody's changing the way they're doing things," she told Time. "They keep running towards streaming, which is, for the most part, what has been shrinking the numbers of paid album sales."
Artists generally don't make nearly as much money putting their music on Spotify as they do selling digital albums and songs on services like iTunes.
Spotify says it pays 70% of its revenue to labels - which will amount to about $1 billion this year - but some artists feel they don't get a big enough cut. The streaming service revealed last year that it paid record labels an average of less than a penny per play, and that's just the money going to labels, not the artists.
Of course, not all artists can afford to pull their music from Spotify, even if they'd like to. Lesser-known artists or groups depend on valuable exposure they can get from the streaming service.