Adele’s inevitable mega-hit new album 25 arrives tomorrow, but the hotly anticipated record will not be released on streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. The singer was reportedly personally involved in the decision.
The New York Times reports:
With less than 24 hours before the album’s release on Friday, the major digital services have been told that “25” will not be made available for streaming, according to three people with direct knowledge of the plans for the release. The album is being released by Columbia Records in the United States, and by an independent, XL Recordings, in Europe and most of the rest of the world.
25 marks Adele’s first release in nearly five years, and she damn near stopped time with the single “Hello,” when she threw down some bad high school poetry on a Zack Morris phone, apologizing to a guy for screwing him over. The song sold more than 1.1 million copies in the United States in its first week, and the video was watched half a billion times. Likewise, Billboard magazine reported late Wednesday that music executives expect the album to sell about 2.5 million copies in its first-week run.
But guess what? We live in 2015. If it’s not convenient, nobody cares. Cars are being made without CD players. Computers often don’t come with disc drives. Where does that leave the precocious standout in the land of overhyped zirconia actually playing the game? Adele will undoubtedly sell a trillion copies of her album, but she exists in a silo of selfish motives. The modern conversation revolves around streaming; which services are best, which are terrible, and what’s coming next. Know what nobody anywhere is talking about? How to get the scratches out of our CDs, or how to keep our Discman from skipping when we’re on the go.
Because that shit is from the past. When was the last time you bought a CD? I genuinely can’t remember, outside of financially affectionate support for bands whose shows I attend. I don’t need CDs any more than I need cassette tapes – and in fact, I celebrated the demise of those overpriced, impossibly fragile coasters-in-wait. Meanwhile, we’re seeing an exploding resurgence of vinyl appreciation, due in no small part to Jack White’s Wonkaesque approach to reviving the craft, packing his own Lazaretto album with a dizzying amount of tricks and secrets.
We want convenience, not a hundred-plus mb’s clogging our already-bogged devices. It’s hardly the first time an artist has chosen to opt out of the streaming ecosystem – Neil Young tried to force us to buy his Pono musical Toblerone by pulling all of his work from streaming. Radiohead/Atoms For Peace frontman Thom Yorke has called Spotify and the like “bad for new music,” and went on to reportedly make upwards of $24 million from the BitTorrent release of his Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes album.
And then there’s Taylor Swift, of course. She got into a trash-talk throwdown with Spotify, then called out Apple Music for royalties shenanigans. She eventually made amends with the latter, agreeing to stream her smash 1989 album on their service. And therein lies the difference. Swift and even Yorke were willing to find a compromise in order to give their fans what they want.
What purpose does Adele’s streaming stonewall serve?
