Just when we thought Radiohead had reconciled with Spotify by releasing their new single, ‘Burn The Witch,’ on the streaming platform…
Just this morning, Radiohead confirmed their general hatred of platform by place their latest album, A Moon Shaped Pool, on pretty much every other streaming platform except for Spotify. It’s widely known that Radiohead lead Thom Yorke is against Spotify (and free streaming in gemeral), and a big advocate for artists getting fair pay. He’s also famously pulled his music from Spotify back in 2013, dubbing the service ”the last desperate fart of a dying corpse.”
The enmity here runs deep. When explaining to Business Insider about his feelings towards Spotify, Yorke has previously said…
”I feel like as musicians we need to fight the Spotify thing. I feel that in some ways what’s happening in the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry. Once that does finally die, which it will, something else will happen.”
Though, many believed that Yorke had changed his mind after releasing the band’s single on the platform last week. But, it seems as though the hatred for Spotify still holds for Yorke and the rest of the Radiohead band members. Instead of opting for free ad-supported streaming, Radiohead are sending their fans to iTunes, Apple Music, Amazon, and Tidal, as well as selling the album on their own website.
That’s just one of several high-profile artists yanking their content from Spotify, though Spotify isn’t budging one bit. When asked about windowing content from streaming services, Spotify’s Ken Parks has previously said,
”The notion that you would want to withhold records from people who are paying 120 pounds or euros or dollars a year is just really mind-boggling. It’s pretty hostile to punish your best customers and fans. We think it’s a wrongheaded approach.”
Perhaps Spotify has accepted the fact that certain artist refuse to play ball. Maybe they’ll come around, eventually. “We look forward to making the rest of ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ available on Spotify as soon as we can,” the app currently states.
(Image by Daniele Dalledonne, Creative Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic, cc by-sa 2.0)
I don’t understand this. Besides the above-mentioned single, two new ones at this point, being on Spotify, their SELF-RELEASED King of Limbs, as well as the remix KoL are also on Spotify. So are they just windowing and putting on some show in the meantime? Are they actually holding out out of principle? Are they waiting for Spotify to offer them some money?
There’s obviously more to this story than Thom’s saying, since if it was a pure principled issue, King of Limbs would be off, just like In Rainbows.
Wow. What an obfuscating response from Parks. Way to dodge the stated reasons that the band isn’t handing all of the music to their service.
If the band wants to be coy, so can Spotify.
Either way, Spotify is the most widely used streaming service – by far! And also, by far, the one that’s most user-friendly in its interface. By withholding your music from there, any band is doing their fans a great disservice – as most of them are certainly there, not Apple Music, Tidal or whatever. And by doing that, they’re shooting themselves in the foot.
Let’s face it: not being on Spotify these days is pretty much shitting on most of your fans, period.
I wouldn’t say “shitting on most of your fans,” but it certainly encourages piracy.
Two wrongs don’t make a right and either way you slice it, all these streaming companies are competing against one another. There’s not enough skin in the game. It’s going to get to a point where Spotify is going to NEED to pivot and not offer a free-tier in order for artists to comply .
Spotify needs to focus on MUSIC and not VIDEO. Stop trying to build other verticals until you figure out why some of the biggest artists in the world don’t want to host their new albums on your platform.
Additionally, fight fire with fire. Pay for some exclusives yourself. Get the conversation about your brand kickstarted again. We all know any press is good press, but the more Spotify continues to be stubborn, the more Apple will continue to win.
What’s awesome is that all the piracy options I stopped using because of streaming…still there and operating!