In October, Coldplay withheld its new album from streaming services like Spotify, Rdio , We7 and Mog.
But that absence is not indefinite.
“Like all of Coldplay’s other titles, the new album will be on [Spotify] eventually,” the band’s manager David Holmes tells Businessweek.
The means that, for a small few individual acts with enough control over their own repertoire and the necessary inclination, streaming is now the unloved part of a windowed release strategy as seen elsewhere in the entertainment industries.
“I am very concerned,” Holmes added. “Spotify competes with download stores.” Coldplay wants to ensure that the people most likely to buy its music, as units for ownership, do so before giving everyone the opportunity to stream it for free with advertising support.
But many other acts, and certainly labels, have come to regard the opposite strategy as significant – they now hand exclusive first-week windows for new albums to services like Spotify precisely to drum up pre-sale excitement.
The UK music industry will debate the value of streaming on February 23, when a MusicTank panel hosts a discussion on the topic.