Taylor Swift's record label has denied Spotify's claims that the singer was "on track" to make $6m (£3.8m) a year from the music streaming service.
In fact, Swift earned $496,044 (£317,000) in the past 12 months for streams of her songs in the US, Big Machine CEO Scott Borchetta said.
Borchetta told Time magazine his label had made more from video streaming site Vevo than from Spotify.
Spotify hit back, saying Swift's global earnings were closer to $2m (£1.2m).
"The more we grow, the more we pay artists, and we're growing like crazy," Spotify's global head of communications Jonathan Prince said.
The argument between Swift and Spotify has escalated since she pulled her back catalogue from the service, just as her new album 1989 hit the charts.
"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," she told Yahoo Music.
"I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free."
He added: "At our current size, payouts for a top artist like Taylor Swift (before she pulled her catalogue) are on track to exceed $6m a year, and that's only growing - we expect that number to double again in a year."
But Borchetta refuted those figures, saying the decision to remove Swift's music from the service was making a larger point.
"The facts show that the music industry was much better off before Spotify hit these shores," he told Time.
"Don't forget this is for the most successful artist in music today. What about the rest of the artists out there struggling to make a career? Over the last year, what Spotify has paid is the equivalent of less than 50,000 albums sold."
Swift's decision may be partly responsible for her stellar record sales in the US, where 1989 has been number one for the last two weeks, shifting 1.68 million copies.
