Cyrus Langhorne
Streaming giant Spotify’s global head of creator services Troy Carter has weighed-in on the overnight trend in competitors landing exclusive album releases with music’s biggest entertainers.
Despite the immediate success albums like Drake’s Views and Frank Ocean‘s Blonde have enjoyed, Carter believes the exclusive power move is ultimately a lose-lose.
But on a recent afternoon at the company’s New York office in Chelsea, Carter, 43, declares that “exclusives are bad for artists, bad for consumers and bad for the whole industry.” Since most users will never subscribe to more than one streaming service, he believes that limiting access to music only incentivizes fans to seek it out on pirate sites or YouTube, where it generates less revenue. “I was brought onboard to strengthen the bridge between Spotify and the music community,” he says. (Billboard)
A Friday (August 26) Bloomberg reports claims Spotify is burying artists’ music based on their exclusive streaming deals.
Spotify has been retaliating against musicians who introduce new material exclusively on rival Apple Music by making their songs harder to find, according to people familiar with the strategy. Artists who have given Apple exclusive access to new music have been told they won’t be able to get their tracks on featured playlists once the songs become available on Spotify, said the people, who declined to be identified discussing the steps. Those artists have also found their songs buried in the search rankings of Spotify, the world’s largest music-streaming service, the people said. Spotify said it doesn’t alter search rankings. (Bloomberg)
A Spotify spokesperson has since reached out to SOHH.com and called the search results story “unequivocally false.”
Recently, rapper Kid Cudi reacted to mentor Kanye West publicly exploding over the current Apple Music/TIDAL streaming war.
In late July, Kanye went on a mini-Twitter tirade and suggested Apple Music should work with TIDAL head Jay Z.
In June, reports developed about Apple possibly looking into buying Jay’s TIDAL service.
Apple is exploring the idea of bringing on Tidal to bolster its Apple Music service because of Tidal’s strong ties to popular artists such as Kanye West and Madonna. The talks are ongoing and may not result in a deal, these people said. Terms of the potential deal aren’t known. (Wall Street Journal)
