After an Adele snub, streaming services face a new test with Coldplay.
First Taylor Swift kept her album 1989 off free music streaming services and scored the best weekly album sales in more than a decade. Then Adele spurned Spotify and Apple Music with her new album 25 and did one better: she shattered the record for opening week sales, set in 2000 by boy band ’NSync.
Is Coldplay next? The British rock group, which is scheduled to release A Head Full of Dreams on Friday, has yet to say whether the new album is to be available on streaming services.
Some of the biggest recording artists, while making a few new tracks available for streaming, are withholding music to boost album purchases, which generate more revenue. Coldplay, a group without the global appeal of Adele, kept its last two albums off Spotify when streaming was much newer. Now, the band members must decide whether they can repeat the success of Swift and Adele.
“I am a little surprised more people have not tried it,” said David Bakula, a senior analyst at Nielsen Music, which tracks the industry.
The list of big artists who have rejected streaming services is small, led by Beyonce, Swift and Adele. Beyonce released her previous album for sale exclusively on Apple Inc’s iTunes. Warner Music, owned by billionaire Len Blavatnik, declined to comment on possible streaming plans for Coldplay’s A Head Full of Dreams, which is to be released by the company’s Parlophone and Atlantic labels. A spokesman for Spotify Ltd also declined to comment, while neither Apple nor a representative for the band responded to requests for comment.
Coldplay and Apple have longstanding ties. They collaborated on an advertisement for a Beats by Dre speaker, which doubled as a trailer for the video of the band’s new single, Adventure of a Lifetime, while frontman Chris Martin performed at an Apple event in 2010. Some industry executives say the group made a mistake by not streaming in the past.
“It hurt them,” said Ted Cohen, managing director of TAG Strategic, a consulting firm whose clients include Sony/ATV Music Publishing. “The sales did not jump appreciably and there was a lot of fan backlash.”
Streaming represents a growth market for the otherwise struggling record industry, which has been in worldwide decline for almost 20 years. Artists without the clout of Adele or Beyonce rely on companies like Spotify and Google Inc’s YouTube for exposure and to encourage sales.
“If you are not an A-list artist, you cannot go out and try something new; you will not get discovered,” Bakula said. “It is the tree falling in the woods.”
No artist in the world sells albums like the British singer Adele. She sold 700,000 copies of her latest release over the weekend, and is poised to become the first artist ever to sell 1 million albums in consecutive weeks, according to Nielsen Music. Her album 25 accounted for more than 40 percent of album purchases in its first seven days, as 3.38 million were bought, Nielsen said.
While the sales vindicate Adele’s decision to withhold the album from streaming, they also underscore her unique position. Her appeal is so vast that she does not need much exposure, which is why her success is unlikely to spur a stampede away from streaming, music industry executives say.
Swift used her decision to advocate for pay services and spark a conversation about whether free streaming devalues music. She withheld 1989 from Spotify last year only because the company insisted on offering it on both its paid and free services.
Source: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2015/12/03/2003633878
