Radiohead has left Spotify out in the cold, with the band deciding to stream new album A Moon Shaped Pool only on Apple Music and TIDAL.
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s qualms with Spotify are well-noted, with him having previously branded it “the last desperate fart of a dying corpse” due to the percentage it pays artists along with its relationship with major labels. This has seemingly led to the band foregoing the service in favor of Apple Music and TIDAL, another major album Spotify has lost out on as its rivals continue to snag a notable amount of exclusives.
“I feel like as musicians we need to fight the Spotify thing,” Thom Yorke explained of his distaste for the service. “I feel that in some ways what’s happening in the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry. Once that does finally die, which it will, something else will happen. But it’s all about how we change the way we listen to music, it’s all about what happens next in terms of technology, in terms of how people talk to each other about music, and a lot of it could be really fucking bad.”
Two tracks from the new Radiohead album – first single ‘Burn the Witch’ and ‘Daydreaming’ – have appeared on Spotify, though it seems that users will have to wait a little while for the LP to launch on the platform in full. Spotify told users “we look forward to making the rest of A Moon Shaped Pool available on Spotify as soon as we can”, which indicates that the company is looking to have the album appear on the service after an unspecified release window, a problem Spotify is facing with increasing frequency.
The service has faced no small degree of difficulty in ensuring that it receives the rights to stream certain albums on their release day, with Radiohead being the latest in a line of artists including Beyonce, Kanye West, Drake, Gwen Stefani and The 1975 who have opted to only allow Spotify to stream their music after exclusivity deals with Apple Music and TIDAL have concluded. This presents a major issue for Spotify, with the company’s monopoly on streamed music facing its biggest threat yet, while listeners are also presented with an unfortunate future in which they will need to sign up to various music streaming services, if they want access to albums they could have previously listened to using Spotify alone.
A Moon Shaped Pool is available to buy through Radiohead’s official website for the album, with a CD and vinyl of the LP also available to pre-order. You can also check it out on iTunes, Apple Music, TIDAL, and Amazon right here.
