Radiohead blackball Spotify as new album hits Apple Music, TIDAL

May 8, 2016

Thom Yorke just got his own back on Spotify.

The Radiohead star has famously had some strong words to say about the Swedish streaming service.

Back in July 2013, Yorke pulled material including his solo work and Atoms For Peace recordings from Spotify, complaining that “new artists get paid f*ck all with this model”.

Later that year he went further, describing the platform and its relationship with the music industry as: “The last desperate fart of a dying corpse.”

On Tuesday (May 3), this schism appeared to have healed, with Radiohead bringing their comeback single Burn The Witch to Spotify – before adding another new track, Daydreaming, on Friday (May 6).

However, Radiohead have just released their new album, A Moon Shaped Pool, on digital services. And it’s bad news for Daniel Ek.

The XL-issued LP is available to stream in full on the likes of Apple Music and TIDAL – but is conspicuous by its absence on Spotify.

The album is also available to download from £9 ($13 / €11.50), while a range of physical options are headed up by a £60 / $86.50 / €76 special edition vinyl, which will ship to fans in September.

The news marks the latest in a string of high-profile artist albums to be held off Spotify.

The past month has seen two huge US releases, Beyonce’s Lemonade and Drake’s Views, exclusively made available to stream on specific services – TIDAL and Apple Music, respectively.

In both cases, Spotify has missed out – so far.

This year alone, we’ve seen other artists including Gwen Stefani and The 1975 ‘window’ their new releases off Spotify – a tactic that is becoming increasingly common.

Over the past 12 months, the likes of Coldplay, Drake & Future, Rihanna, Kanye West and Dr Dre have – to differing degrees – kept their new music off Spotify but made it available on rival services.

Spotify is already telling fans of Radiohead on its platform that “we look forward to making the rest of A Moon Shaped Pool available on Spotify as soon as we can”.

According to Spotify data, Radiohead currently have 4.57m active monthly listeners on the platform, making them its 199th most popular artist.

The tracklisting of A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead’s first studio album for five years, is as follows: