The recent threads on Vinyl and CD versus streaming threw up a number of considerations, but several object-heads talked about the fact that they owned the music and that no-one could take it away from them was really important. Five years ago the discussion would have been dominated by the artists who weren’t on Spotify. Since then the last big hold-outs: Floyd, AC/DC, Swift, Zeppelin, Beatles have all taken the green dot shilling. But the question’s still valid, and was raised. Today, when I played Lloyd Coxson’s King of Dub Rock and realised that only volume one was on Spotify. A quick check on my itunes (yes, still digital but I do own the files at least) revealed that yes vol 2 was Not On Spotify. So here we go, your nominations for the Not On Spotify awards.
I’ll kick off with some obvious categories. The Spotify licensing and royalties model clearly doesn’t work at all for compilations. Ace Records – whose excellent Stax Funk series I am currently enjoying – are barely represented. Dave Godin’s Deep Soul Treasures only exists as the somewhat melancholic user playlists.
Even worse than compilations (where at least you can reconstruct the album) is the DJ mix – the artform the double CD was made for. Mixmag live – no. Global Underground – literally a couple out of 60. Fabric – a half-dozen out of over a hundred. Journeys By DJ – what are you even on. User playlists are useless here as all you are getting is the unmixed versions of the tracks used.
Only one rule: albums not tracks. Some artist album suggestions in the comments.
A few
De La Soul – want to reconstruct the history of golden age rap? There will be a big hole as 3 Feet High and Rising and De La Soul Are Dead are both NOS.
Comsat Angels -nothing past the first three on Fiction.
Modern Eon – their first and only minor new wave classic is absent.
The Scars – Author Author.
Towering Inferno – Kaddish classic of industrial/performance art/unclassifiable/collage rock
LTJ Bukem – wot no Logical Progression vol 1.
This was just from a few minutes scan of the CD shelves, didn’t even go into the vinyl but presumably the older and obscurer the release the less likely it is to be available.
All I can see of the Combat Angels on Spotify are two Lost Sessions compilations – none of the proper albums. I have to rely on my ancient vinyl copy of Waiting for a Miracle.
There doesn’t seem to be any Fatima Mansions on Spotify and, while there are a lot of Shriekback tracks on there, some of their best early tracks are absent.
Well that is wierd @bamber as all i can see are the 3 Fiction albums. What country are you in – I didn’t think that Spotify was that country-specific anymore. This could be a bit like when I order my dad’s online Sainsburys shop – he emails me for offers he has seen on the website. I then explain that I have to log in to order, and once logged in the offers are different or in some cases not there at all!
Re the Comsats. There appears to be two . One has the first three Fiction albums, the other has those Lost Sessions. Silly Spotify.
Could @moseleymoles or @Freddy steady post a Spotify link to Waiting for a Miracle on here so I can see what happens when I click on it. Hopefully reality won’t start to unravel as a result.
Try this.
Hope it works @bamber
Thanks for trying @FreddySteady
Alas it didn’t work. I got a message saying “this track is not available in your country”, that being Ireland. I’ve only had this issue with Spotify once before when I was trying to listen to the excellent podcast “Classic Scottish Albums”. Then I assumed the issue was that it was BBC or that the clips of music were a legal minefield. A friend in London kindly downloaded the ones I wanted and sent them to me. I’m puzzled about the Comsat Angels thing though.
@bamber
Weird post punk sub goth madness.
If you really need copies of their albums, I can help in an old school style.
WFM will fit onto one side of a C90. I still have it somewhere – probably with something totally incongruous on t’other side, like Rodney O and Joe Cooley.
Thanks lads. As I said above I still have Waiting for a Miracle on vinyl and it regularly gets an airing when I get to spend time in my den – rarely. I also have the means to burn it to CD. The other albums are somewhere on cassette albums and I still have the means to play them too. Thanks again for the offer.
Don’t think you can buy Del la soul on CD or Vinyl anymore. It’s stuck in legal Hell because of all the samples.
Didn’t they make all their albums available as a free download a few years ago ?
A Valentine’s Day gift, no less ♥️
Amateur-ripped MP3s, no better than what you’d get down the old Eel.
I got some free stuff and it wasn’t perfect – it’s literally the worst thing that’s ever happened to anybody.
Amateur-ripped mp3s they might be, but the 3 Feet High ones still sound better than the f*ckin’ record!
The wee Scotty inside me record player has never forgiven me for pushing the volume so far up into the red for that album (“Listen to Ghetto Thang at the same level as every other bleedin’ song you own? The ENGINES CANNAE TEKK IT!!!!!”)
One for the obscure Proggers out there:
England – Garden Shed Music
Last Of The Jubblies is on there, but not their 1977 meisterwork
Trout Mask Replica. T’aint there, just a playlist formed from Grow Fins rarities and the like.
This is why I subscribe to YouTube Music. If it’s not on the streaming services but it’s been uploaded as a video, it’s playable. That’s how I got to enjoy Septober Energy by Centipede without paying much money or pirating. And yes, TMR is on YTM.
That is a biggie, well biggie round here at least.
A lot of the big CD box sets aren’t there – Dylan’s are just one example….
I don’t even know what streaming is! If it’s “Alexa play…”
Ace, as alluded to above, and my favourite label by miles, nowhere to be found.
I’m convinced that Magic FM, any Gold station, and Radio 2, are way ahead of the curve.
In 2030, it’ll be famous acts (actually, it’ll be the famous songs by the famous acts), and good luck if you want to listen to The Action, an obscure 60s film soundtrack, or a Rockabilly compilation… ain’t gonna be there.
CD or, if you must, vinly it right now, people.
Well actually Rolled Gold and the Complete Parlophone recordings from The Action are on there. So we need specifics rather than blanket statements.
They might be now… I’m talking about 2030.
You think they’ll still be there then?
Want specifics?
Outside a pub a couple of years ago… he says “this thing can play anything”… I say “bet it doesn’t”… he says “you’re on”… I say “let’s start with the As, Aardvark by Aardvark”… can’t be sure, I think he’s still looking, but that free pint was nice.
His reply should have been – “Who or what the fuck is Aardvark by Aardvark? Look you nerd, I’ve got Sting and UB40 and Coldplay and everybody. And you got Aardvark by Aardvark? I’ll have a pint of Timmy Landlord, please”
I used to love Landlord but now I can’t handle it and have to have their normal bitter. Anyway, where was I?
Dear Landlord, don’t put a price on my soul
Agree. Nearly all of the regional brews that have gone national are pretty bland these days. Stick to micro-breweries (preferably in micro-pubs). Probably age-related comment.
Well there’s plenty to enjoy in this little tale of musical one upmanship but I suppose the main thing that I’ll take home is that Aardvark by Aardvark is on Spotify. Which slightly undermines your point.
Interestingly (or perhaps not), my quick check also revealed that, whilst Aardvark by Aardvark is also available for delivery by Amazon Prime at a cost of £10.99, the album Aardvark by Kensington Market (from the deramdaze friendly Golden Age, no less) is also on Spotify, yet not currently available on CD at the same retailer.
So it seems to be a win for the streaming service as regards providing the consumer with access to somewhat niche acts with little to no effort expended tracking them down.
Like many here, I suspect, I stream music every day but also maintain a significant ‘hard copy’ habit. Sometimes driven by a sentimental tendency to want to own the artefact, sometimes by a desire to more actively support the artist. I doubt that physical sales will ever totally disappear; the music industry is committed to making money and the best way to do that is ultimately to make the consumer pay, one way or the other, for the product. Streaming models, it seems to me, just won’t cut it in the long run.
Right, I’m off to listen to Aardvark by Aardvark. Alexa….!
It’s on Amazon as well. “Alexa, turn it off, TURN IT OFF!!!!” I lasted all the time it took me to finish my Timmy.
Yes, it’s bloody awful, isn’t it?
Aardvark by Kensington Market, however; very good.
Worth thinking about whether CD players will still be made in 2030, that’s perhaps pessimistic but by 2040 (19 years away) it’s a good question. In 2000 you could still buy videos in HMV, the last VCR was made in 2016.
CD is 40 years old now, so will be nearly 60 in 2040.
There will be CD players in 2040 but they’ll be audiophile units built like broadcast equipment and priced like luxury cars, much like Reel to Reel tape decks (WWII tech) are now.
Tesco can barely give away DVD players nowadays.
It doesn’t really undermine my point.
Whatever the streaming service was he had, he thought it had everything, I asked him to get the first thing in the alphabet, Aardvark (for the spelling more than its artistic credentials), and it didn’t.
If it has now, fine, will it in 2030?
Do these things go in and out of being available?
There surely has to come a time when something that obscure will cease to be available permanently.
My point is, if you want to make sure you can listen to something that isn’t “1” or “Thriller” or “Rumours” or “Abba Gold,” all of which I’m sure will be there in 2030, keep the physical product. That way, as long as you have a device to play it on, it’s guaranteed.
Guaranteed in the way that 8 track, cassette, mini disk, DAT, SACD and DVD audio are? It’s a big assumption – that you’ll always have a working device to play it on.
Two factors working in opposition as regards the availability of stuff on streaming services. Storage and access.
Factor No. 1: Storage.
Media storage is very cheap and easy to expand these days. Music files, when compressed, are not especially big so a lot of storage will hold a huge amount of stuff. There may eventually be a day when there’s no more storage available for new stuff, but I would say it’s a very long way off.
Factor No. 2: Access.
The more stuff you make available to your customers, the bigger the database you have to then search in order to find it for them. The bigger the database, the more computing power you need to find things reasonably quickly.
Also, the more customers you have, the more server space and bandwidth you require to keep them.
It’s not just old stuff. The last Pernice Brothers album (Spread The Feeling from 2019) is nowhere to be seen, you ned to head over to Bandcamp for that.
We waited around 40 years for The Distractions debut to be released on CD. I can only find one Distractions track on Spotify.
Needed to check but The Faith Brothers are on there which is a good thing.
Amen to that.
Maria Schneider’s albums are all missing from Spotify apart from a 5-track “Essential” compilation and a single track from her recent “Data Lords” album.
I don’t think she’s got much of a presence on any of the streaming services because she doesn’t like them.
I think I’ll get by.
Me too. Streaming fills 97.43% of my needs. I don’t mind forking out a few shekels to buy the stuff currently not available. So far this year I’ve spent…. let me see, checks calculator, ah, nothing at all.
And I don’t understand why @deramdaze thinks all the niche stuff will disappear by 2030. There’s infinite storage in that there Cloud, costs Spotify/Amazon etc virtually bugger all to stick Jimmy Boo Boo &The Booboos in there.
‘Obsessing over the 2.57% of our needs not met by Spotify’ – Afterword t-shirt.
Yeah, but the format in which people access music is not going to be exactly as it is now. How do you know that that there Cloud, when it changes to something else, which it will, will automatically store what it does now?
Take websites… football and rugby clubs are always changing their websites, and trying to get information from just 10 years ago can be a nightmare. Then all was fine, but after several re-brands that information is often either buried within one of the many updates or the site is closed down and you can no longer get into it.
It’s why my football book is going to be exactly that… a “book.”
Well internet speeds are only going to get faster and sound quality is only going to get better. If Spotify dies, there’ll be other streaming services taking over and since you don’t have a product to lose, you simply listen to all your faves somewhere else, no worse off than before. If the internet dies, well, so will society, since we are dependent on the whole, virtual edifice. Of course you can have both product, and streaming to browse for virtually everything. Similarly both books and kindle. Different formats for different situations/times. I realise I’m wasting my breath.
Can I just say slagging of Spotify for not having an album on it makes no sense to me. Unless you had that album in your mitts along with a vinly machine, whilst down the pub, you haven’t got it either have you?
I would say that, if anything, there will be even more niche stuff available in 10 years time.
The mp3, m4a, flac, alac and wav file formats are now the standards for consumer digital sound reproduction and good current devices use all of them. I don’t see any of these standards dying out or a lack of devices to play them on.
Given that Spotify is notorious for paying the artists who create the music that generates its profits so badly, I can’t understand why acts allow their life’s work to be exploited by such a service.
While many artists presumably don’t have a choice, genuine music lovers like ourselves most certainly do in the form of the more artist-friendly Bandcamp.
They get paid something, pitifully small but something. But mostly it’s for exposure. Friend tells a friend, they go to the concert, buy a t-shirt, join the fan club…or that’s the dream
Last time I checked there were no profits. It’s a lot more complicated than big bad Spotify. It’s always been a few big acts subsidising lesser ones. Most acts have never really made any money. They got advances and any royalties were taken to repay the advances. We should thank Simon Cowell in a way, At least now you can tip artists on Spotify. I wonder how many who get on their high horses about pittances paid actually tip anyone?
@Diddley-Farquar
Still stuck in the CD era I’m afraid.
As have never used – and have no intention of using – Spotify, being tight with tips is not something I am guilty of.
Yes, according to Spotify, 1,820 artists earned more than $500K from the site in 2020. 870 earned more than $1 million. One assumes that most of the artists also earned something, perhaps as much again, from other streaming services, You Tube, etc.
Back in the golden age of record sales, I wonder how many were earning that in a single year , as opposed to just getting big advances ( i.e. debt).
Having had a regular kicking for seemingly screwing artists, Spotify recently clarified that they don’t pay artists at all. They pay rights holders, which might sometimes be the artist, but more often would be the record company, or as has started to happen recently, an investment firm who has bought up rights.
Which is not to deny artists get a poor deal. But it seems more likely that once again it’s the record companies screwing them again. A blues guitarist I follow on FB was bemoaning what he saw as Spotty robbing him, but it became evident, he wouldn’t (or couldn’t) pull his work from the platform, and as the conversation wore on, he admitted all of his income came via his agent, and he received nothing from Spotty direct.
Spotify reckons in 2020, 184,500 artists generated recording and publishing royalties of over $1000 and 870 artists generated over $1,000,000 compared to 2017 when only 450 artists did those numbers. Spotify also claim “the music industry has grown by 44% since 2014 and that has been driven by streaming. Of this, Spotify has contributed $5B and makes up twenty percent of recorded industry revenue. ”
Septober Energy – Keith Tippetts Centipede band
Autumn Grass – Continuum (nothing at all by that underrated Prog band)
Dive Deep – Quintessence (Colin?)
Ok, not an album but I’ve been trying to track down a replacement for my tatty 7” single of Rossmore Road by Barry Andrews. Not on Spotify therefore Spotify is rubbish.
True that. B-side also ace.
Quite a few copies on Discogs.
@yorkio
Cheers. Should have made it clearer. I’m after a cd version (that I don’t think exists,) failing that I’ll listen on Spotify. Except I can’t! I know there are YouTube version but that’s not the same is it? Sniff.
@Freddy Steady
CD? You’ll be lucky!
(Check your messages though.)
I have @yorkio and thank you very much indeed. That will certainly scratch that itch.
@moseleymoles
I don’t have access to my tatty 7” I’m afraid but have a vague memory of something about a paranoid psychopath…remind me please!
A bonkers spoken word piece about a night on the town that goes epically wrong:
I remember Annie Nightingale used to play that a lot on her Sunday night show, alongside other quirky numbers like “Fish Heads.” Good times.
@mc-escher
I think that might have been where I heard it first though I have a vague recollection of it being in a Peel Festive 50.
John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett: Live At The Roundhouse, Deep And Meaningless
John Otway: Where Did I Go Right?, All Balls And No Willy, Montserrat
John Otway and Attila the Stockbroker: Cheryl, A Rock Opera
I won’t bother to list all the missing Otway singles and compilations. I’d like to pretend that it’s because I have a life to live but really I just can’t be arsed.
Furniture only have the Cherry Red reissue which I worked on but none of the other albums. I’ve never had any royalties from Spotify (nor from Cherry Red, for that matter…)
Precious little by Clock DVA on Spotify. And the price of Advantage these days! When did *that* happen?
As a keen collector of African stuff I have always been staggered at the depth of the Spotify catalogue.
I also checked a few lesser known Aussie albums and the strike rate is very high. Only the really rare stuff was not there. I was, however, surprised that Ariel’s album A Strange Fantastic Dream was not available. Ariel was a spin off band of Mike Rudd. Mike Rudd is the mainstay of Spectrum a long running prog band. Anyway I asked Mike why Ariel wasn’t up there. I don’t think he knew it wasn’t but surmised as follows “UMA has reclaimed my EMI output and the unavailability of A Strange Fantastic Dream on Spotify appears to be a result of this. Very troubling and an even vindictive move from my perspective.”
So, for whatever reason, the controlling company can’t be arsed having it up there.
Fatima Mansions seem to have disappeared from the world almost completely. Physical is only second hand and Spotify presence is zero. Wouldn’t matter so much if half their career hadn’t coincided with me buying albums on cassette. Doh.
Poor/contrary Cathal as Microdisney are also very poorly represented, We Hate You South African B…..s and Crooked Mile are prominent by their absence.
We Hate You… is there, but under its new title – Love Your Enemies.
ah ok. Not the glossy 80s pop stylings of Crooked Mile though.
Can I just say that Singer’s Hampstead Home is one of my favourite ever songs ever.
The availability of Roy Harper’s catalogue has improved in the last year or so.
The first 8 albums are there, with Sophisticated Beggar in 6 different permutations – not all complete nor under the correct title.
Additionally his last album Man And Myth, Jugula nd a recentish live album are there.
Missing are The five BBC live albums, Flashes From The Archives Of Oblivion, The Unknown Soldier, One, The Green Man, Burn The World, Descendant of Smith, Death Or Glory and probably a couple more.
XTC’s Apple Venus and Wasp Star are not there and never have been. One that dropped off recently is David Crosby’s Croz. His other recent releases are available strangely.
Both Crosby and Partridge are very anti Spotify so I assume they have a veto against some of their work
The last 2 XTC ones were on a minor label so he’s probably blocked it
The last two XTC albums were on Ape Records – it’s Partridge’s own label (Colin Moulding refused to get involved).
That definitely explains it as Partridge is very anti Spotify (understandably)
The Wasp star album is excellent IMO (less keen on Apple Venus personally) too so shame it wasn’t more widely heard
Always preferred Apple Venus myself.
Just spotted there’s no decent Jim O’Rourke eg Eureka, The Visitor, Halfway to a Threeway. Loads of his unlistenable free form techy shit is there for some reason.
One of my favourite songs of all time is not on there;
Sonny Till – Tears & Misery
Nothing from the Drag City label either which means no Joanna Newsom. I know she is a bit marmite round these parts, but I adore her first few albums
From today’s itunes: nothing from Thievery Corporation pre-Cosmic Game which means the first three albums are absent – guessing that sample clearances might again be the reason.