reports have been flying that music streaming app Spotify is considering a ‘windowing’ of popular artists and albums behind the paid subscriptions tier in order to attract big names, like taylor Swift and Adele, back on to the platform.
The windowed approach would mean the 20 million paid subscribers would receive exclusive albums or would access content before the company’s 80 million free users. This issue of artist payment has been one of the biggest reasons big acts like Taylor Swift and Adele have withheld their records from the streaming giant.
In respose to these reports a representative for Spotify provided B&T a statement from Jonathan Prince, the company’s global head of communications & public policy: “We are 100 per cent committed to our model because we believe that a free, ad-supported tier combined with a more robust premium tier is the best way to deliver music to fans, create value for artists and songwriters, and grow the industry.”
One of the big reasons this issue is swirling around at the moment is because Coldplay held its latest album A Head Full Of Dreams from Spotify upon its initial release on December 4th because of the band managements concerns over Spotify’s free listening tier. Services like Apple Music and Tidal, which require paid subscriptions, were given access to the Coldplay album as soon as it was released.
The Coldplay album will now be available on Spotify, for both free and paid subscribers, on Friday. In response, Prince added: “In that context, we explored a wide range of promotional options for the new Coldplay album and ultimately decided, together with management, that Coldplay and its fans would best be served with the full album on both free and premium this Friday.”
