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New Coldplay album not on Spotify as band keeps new record off freemium
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 4 December 2015
So, here’s the news for any of you that occupy the colourful intersection that sits in the middle of the Coldplay Fans/Spotify Users Venn diagram. Fuck you to fucking hell, you fucking fuckers. That’s not me saying that. I’d never say that. That’s Chris Martin. Those were his exact words. He yelped them. Loudly. Right in your face. So that a little bit of spit sprayed onto your nose. He was right angry about it. Albeit only in my head.
By which, I mean, Coldplay’s only slightly tedious new long playing record ‘A Head Full Of Dreams’ is not available on Spotify as it goes live everywhere else this morning. Though, those of you who follow these matters on an academic level might like to know that this is a Swiftonian Boycott not an Adelian Stand. In that Coldplay are allowing their new album to stream, but not on services that are partly or entirely free-to-access.
Which brings us back to that old question: why doesn’t Spotify allow premiere league artists to window their new releases so that they become available to the service’s paying premium users first, subsequently arriving on freemium several weeks or months down the line? Because ‘A Head Full Of Dreams’, which is already available on premium-only streaming platforms like Apple Music, could be in the ears of all those premium Spotify scamps this very morn if only their stream-provider-of-choice would offer that flexibility.
Surely that would be a good move for Spotify too, as well as the artists who don’t like their brand new musical business being made available to all for free, because it would provide a very compelling reason for the free users to upgrade, ie exactly what Spotify wants/needs them to do. Though presumably Spotify fears opening the floodgates, wondering quite who it is who decides which artists are sufficiently premium to qualify for such windowing. So, it’s all or nothing on the Spotifys, which is why ‘A Head Full Of Dreams’ is absent as of today.
Though, unlike Swift, who pulled from the Spotify platform entirely over this issue, Coldplay’s back catalogue remains on service – as do two singles off the new LP – and it’s thought the whole shebang will filter through at some point in the future. In the meantime Spotify users will have to make do with listening to something supremely superior elsewhere in the service’s catalogue. This is a personal favourite.
In other news, Coldplay will be doing the halftime show at the Super Bowl next February. It’ll be like the closing ceremony to the London Paralympics all over again. But hopefully less shit. Though presumably the band’s stint won’t be included in the telecast of the big game, because that would mean people getting access to Coldplay music for free.
