We and the rest of the collective tech and music media have written acres about Taylor Swift’s Spotify dispute in recent weeks, but what about other artists who’ve been prominent in their holdout strategies?
They might just be warming up to the streaming service. This week Spotify got new albums from Beyoncé and Coldplay on the same day that they went on sale from iTunes and other digital stores. The caveat: neither album is strictly “new”.
Beyoncé has released the “Platinum Edition” of her ‘Beyoncé’ album this week, with all the tracks from last year’s surprise iTunes release plus a (virtual, obviously) extra CD of new tracks and remixes available to stream on Spotify.
And also out this week is ‘Ghost Stories Live 2014’ from Coldplay, which is a live album of performances culled from various gigs on the band’s last tour. Yesterday, its Spotify version was getting a big promotional splash in the company’s desktop client, as it launched on iTunes.
A re-release and a live album, then: given that the original ‘Beyoncé’ and ‘Ghost Stories’ enjoyed their peak sales while being windowed from streaming services, the day-and-date streaming availability for the new releases doesn’t mean either artist is abandoning windowing for brand-new studio recordings.
But it’s a step forward for Spotify and its streaming rivals nonetheless. Note, Beyoncé also made all of the videos from her iTunes “visual album” available on her Vevo channel yesterday too, nearly a year after the Apple release.
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