Spotify: Ek of a Year

As the world shrugs at a new Coldplay album (pictured) not appearing on streaming services, Spotify has adopted a new strategy for revealing artists who aren’t streaming new albums as founder of Playlists.net Kieron Donoghue noted earlier this week. Fans searching for albums listed but not playable on Spotify, including Coldplay’s ‘Ghost Stories’ and recent releases from the Black Keys and Beyonce are now greeted with an in-player message.

This states: “The artist or their representatives have decided not to release this album on Spotify. We are working on it and hope they will change their mind soon”.

Some larger selling artists are choosing to not stream new albums on release date despite having archives on Spotify, due to exclusive deals with iTunes. There is also a growing belief that physical and paid for digital are the ‘cinema’ equivalent of an LP release and that streaming should represent the video / dvd release to maximise revenue.

Artists including London Grammar and Wild Beasts have also employed this tactic for recent albums and it certainly isn’t damaging sales- Coldplay are unsurprisingly on target to have the biggest selling album of 2014 so far. The holding messages only appear for albums that Spotify expects to host at some point in the future, i.e. with labels and artists where deals are in place and not for artists who have withdrawn their entire catalogue.

In related news, Spotify has revealed that it has built up ten million paying subscribers and more than 40 million active users across 56 countries.

Spotify CEO and Founder Daniel Ek said : “We’ve had an amazing year, growing from 20 markets to 56 as people from around the world embrace streaming music. 10 million subscribers is an important milestone for both Spotify and the entire music industry”.