While much of America has gotten on board with Spotify since they launched in a year ago (especially since their integration with Facebook), there have been some notable holdouts from the service. While it’s mainly been established bands (Tool, Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, The Beatles) or acts waiting to put their newer full length albums up (The Black Keys, Adele, Coldplay), Century Media, Metal Blade, Sumerian and Prosthetic made headlines last year by pulling their entire catalogues from Spotify. Now it looks like Century Media is back.
We got a press release earlier today stating that Century Media, as well as InsideOut Music, Superball Music and People Like You Records, have put their music back on Spotify. The press release says that feedback from fans and continued discussions with Spotify led to the label to reverse their decision. So basically, it wasn’t just a combination of fans and blogs like ours bitching that led to the reversal – it looks like they might have negotiated a better payment rate. But given how they freaked out earlier in the year when their distributor accidentally put a few releases on Spotify, something’s definitely led to their change of heart.
“Spotify offers great tools to discover new artists, CM’s European GM Antje Lange stated. “We feel that this is essential for our promising newcomers. In that respect, Spotify gives those artists a very good forum.”
“We respect that music fans wanted to have instant access to our catalog via Spotify,” states CM North America president Don Robertson added. “But we also have to consider the rights of our artists. After practicing some due diligence, we’re moving ahead confident that both the artist and the fan are being fairly served by this developing platform.”
Century Media says they’ll continue to “evaluate Spotify as a music discovery tool and welcome the fan’s opportunity to preview a release in its entirety before deciding to buy a copy.”It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. The last sentence sounds like somewhat of a veiled threat that they could just as easily pull their titles again. But considering that people that want to illegally download music will continue to do it anyway, labels are leaving money on the table by pulling out of Spotify. Granted, that money pales in comparison to an actual album purchase, but it adds up.
