The battle between independent metal labels and Spotify continues on. Century Media, Metal Blade, and Prosthetic Records have now been joined by Sumerian Records, who have recently pulled a majority of their roster off of the European streaming service. As expected, the label has already received criticism over the move. However, Sumerian records have responded to critics and shared their stance on Spotify…via Twitter.
In a series of tweets (starting with this one), Sumerian records responded to Metal Delirium’s Matthew Kuritz with the following:
“@MDBlitz @prostheticrcds @metalblade @centurymediaeu we rather be able to send our bands around the world on tour, make music videos and continue to support their careers and livelihood. Go to youTube if you want to hear all our music. We are all about exposure but only major labels have equity in Spotify. All us metal labels will join forces and make our own so that our artists can still eat.”
Shortly after tweeting the above, Sumerian Records tweeted another series of responses to criticism saying:
“@MDBlitz our music is on Spotify, just not every single song. You don’t need to hear 12+ songs to decide if you’re interested in a band.
@MDBlitz you can hear every album song on our YouTube channel. And we have specific songs from all albums on spotify too. Party on”
Currently Spotify’s selection of music from Sumerian’s roster, which includes Asking Alexandria, Born Of Osiris, The Faceless and many others, is very limited or non-existent. While we wouldn’t hold our breath for the union of indie metal labels (as hinted in the earlier tweets), Sumerian does highlight how the indie labels feel shafted by Spotify. Though it took them years to negotiate with the major labels, it’s becoming more apparent that Spotify completely ignored independent labels during the talks (as Metal Blade CEO Brian Slagal also highlighted). And that’s a big issue because as we’ve mentioned countless of times, Spotify really needs everyone one on board in order to last. That means either Spotify needs to actually sit down with labels or at least make their rates more known. Sure, labels are still making more than they would be via illegal downloading alone, but it’d be nice to know exactly by how much.
