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Next week we are going to be making some changes to our music catalogue that we feel are important to communicate clearly. Unfortunately we are going to be removing a number of songs from our catalogue and adding country restrictions to some tracks, which may make them unplayable for you.
Why are we doing this?
The changes are being made so that we implement all the proper restrictions that are required by our label deals. Some tracks will be restricted from play in certain countries, this means that if you share tracks with friends who are in other countries it’s possible that they won’t be able to listen to them. The reason for this is that our agreements contain strict rules as to what tracks can and can’t be played in various countries that we are now capable of implementing. These restrictions are a legacy from when most music was sold on tapes and CDs and they have continued over into streaming music, our hope is that one day restrictions like this will disappear for good.
Additionally, some of the music that has been delivered to us had been delivered by mistake even though the artist did not want their music to be included in a streaming service. In order to respect the decisions of the artist we now have to remove those tracks. We have not lost any licenses and no labels have stopped working with us, this is just a matter of updating our catalogue to be in line with the agreements we actually have. In hindsight it would have been better to remove this in October when we launched publicly, we realize this now and apologize to you for not doing it sooner.
How will this affect you?
A number of the tracks that you’ve listened to previously will no longer be available for streaming, these tracks have already been removed from the search function. If you have some of these songs in playlists we will try to automatically replace those songs with versions from albums that we are not removing so you don’t lose the song. If there is no replacement available then the song will appear in red on your playlists.
What’s next?
From this point on there are no plans to remove any more music and our catalogue will only grow from here. We already have music from all the major labels and a vast majority of the independent labels licensed, between them we have millions of tracks that we still can add into Spotify. Now it’s a matter of importing that music into our system, which we are doing on an ongoing basis in an effort to add thousands of albums a week. We continue to work hard to sign deals with more labels and will work with the labels we have signed to fill the holes in our catalogue.
Our dream is to create a music experience where users can play whatever music they want, whenever they want, it may take awhile but we will keep working at it. Please feel free to leave any questions you may have on the blog or join the conversation on our forum if you require more information.
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Understood. I will still support you and hope others will as well. Please try to implement frequent updates to the library as I believe this is much better from a psychological point of view.
noooo!!! :(, i was waiting for it!!, just hope it's not to much thats going away
no, don't do that! Geographical restrictions are stupid, something from the XX century. What happens if I travel to another country and i want to listen to spotify? Labels don't have to have fear! Spotify is great and it's the future of the music industry
The labels will hopefully change their policies soon. Hopefully. And why would a band not want to be on a streaming service? That's just plain stupid.
"And why would a band not want to be on a streaming service? That’s just plain stupid." Exactly. It's time for the fans to let their bands know this. Latest band to opt out is Tool...
A clear statement about the ongoing tracks deletions finally, that's good! And i don't worry much, because you have promised in the forums that you are adding about 10.000 tracks per day (http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/why_are_you_removing_albums#reply_690834), so you will catch up the number of deleted tracks very fast. Adding 3.650.000 tracks in one year sounds too good to be true...
Since this pretty much rid Spotify of all the music i really enjoyed that it were there im cancelling my subscription.
Well, this sucks hard. I really hate it when technology is fscked up by stupid politics. I understand that you have no choice though, it's the record companies and the artists I'm mostly frustrated with. Is there a list of bands that have opted out or demanded region restrictions? I really want such a list so I don't happen to buy anything with them by mistake...
Actually, an option to see whether the track/album exists but are not available in my country or something similar would be nice.
Well this sucks.
People, this is only natural. Think of a band, signed to a label or not, and then they do one or many license deals with other labels in other countries. Then these foreign labels might get the digital rights in their specific territory. And then it is up to them to do the deal locally with Spotify (and other digital services), and get payments from Spotify, and pay a share back to the original label/band. Some artists/labels keep all digital rights themselves for the World, then their music is avalailable everywhere on Spotify. Some might do the license deals I mentioned, and then the music most likely will be up in those territories, too, once all deals with Spotify are in place. My qualified guess is that all artists and labels want their music up everywhere as soon as possible, so most of the stuff that goes now will probably be available again.
I second that, tuxie! I don't want anything in my house with these assh.. err, artists I wouldn't presume there will be discounted premium-prices for affected countries... Or less commercial interruptions...
well this sure sucks... and the Tool catalog is gone... damn.
It'd be nice to see a list of the bands affected by this. That way the fans can exert some pressure on the artists to get the tracks available.
I'm a bit sad now. One of my favorite bands are completely gone from Spotify. Falconer, I miss you. Keep up the work tho!
Oh boo hoo! Tool has gone? How will I sleep at night? Now if the Toto catalogue was gone, then I'd be throwing my toys out of pram, but Tool? Seriously, people.
I would love to know how the process goes. Quite a bit of my favourite bands are on same record label (InsideOut in this case), which has also a lot of bands that I've been trying out to see if I want to buy their CDs. Now it seems that all the music from this label is going the way of the dodo. Does it mean that Spotify has no deal with the label and everything marked for removal now will be gone for good, or is it something like first remove all the stuff from one label and then re-add the bands that have given their approval, also making the archives uniform in the process? I would also love to see a list of albums that have been added daily or weekly so I wouldn't have to do the same searches over and over again to see if something has been added.
When are the record companies going to get out of the 80s? They can't stay there forever. This is a sad day for spotify. Hope you guys can help the recod companies to realize that the internet has no limitations, and therefor no boarders.
This sucks bigtime, No more Lagwagon....And I guess lots of bands I like are removed.....Well that's life.....
Kind of regretting on paying 1 year in advance.. Though I'm glad to see that my favorite artist's songs are still there
hungoverdrawn: Well, there are others out there who, luckily I should say, listen to other music than the mainstream. I've recently lost a ton of great underground music such as BSOD, The Kristet Utseende, etc. Guess I'll just switch to whichever solution has the broadest catalog.
So if a track doesn't show up in search right now I can pretty much expect not to hear it again? Because then I've lost pretty much every artist I listened to through Spotify, so your service is pretty much useless now :( I guess record companies never learn, and you'll probably flop when you go out of beta because of this, I'm sorry but it's true :(
I was thinking about paying for this, but I'm really happy I didn't. This is the end for Spotify for me. I can't be bothered when most of the music i listened to disappeared. Godspeed.
Musiclovers Without Borders are again know as Downloaders Without Borders. Artists Without Borders have landed, where is Record Labels Without Borders?
I must say you are much like the petrolcompanies in reverse, quick to remove but slow to add music. All of Frank Zappas catalog gone! I thought you sad that the changes would be next week...
Thank you for informing us about this in an honest and upfront way. Too bad so much of everything else about Spotify is secret and opaque. Maybe it was cute when Spotify still was in undercover mode for the beta. Now it's just annoying and boring. Spotify is not Apple and you don't get to act like it if you want my respect. How about using this blog to actually inform your customers about real stuff instead (more community functions in the service when? linux client when? are all development resources tied up in iphone/s60 client work? etc etc) instead of using it to announce that the latest flash in the pan artist has his/her new single released... This combined with the fact that lots and lots of music isn't included in the service and now lots is going to be removed, makes me cancel my subscription today. /ET
Well, I won't be renewing a paid subscription when it runs out in a few weeks. Many tracks have already been deleted and if is gonna be a case of clicking on a track only to find you can't play it in your country then thats not user friendly. Surely it would've made sense to sort out licencing issues before even getting as far as Beta? This decision is gonna cause lots of negative publicity and ultimately could affect the viability of the site. Back to Illegal downloading then!
Zappa gone? OK, this is it. I paid a full year up front. But without Led Zeppelin and Frank Zappa, well... this is no longer an interesting place for music. I couldn't care less for all the blog posts about Spice Girls prereleasing their latest single. If Spotify cannot cater for the majority of my music, it will never be my number one source of music. Back to Itunes...
sucks =( , but understand them though. I still don´t think this will be the end for Spotify. Let´s just hope that they add som more music soon ,
Now this sucks. The record companies are living in the past with their not-Internet-compatible licencing practises. Boo to them. It also sucks that Spotify didn't tell earlier what was going on. Songs - even complete back catalogues of different bands, King Crimson for example - just started to vanish without any explanation. I, for one, will think twice before renewing my subscription next week.
sucks, but life goes on. may be you can make this whole process more transparent for the users, by having a list for each day where they can see which songs were added or removed.
There's rumoured to be a number of other music streaming services starting soon, no wonder Spotify is still beta as the business model looks poorly thought out. It appears to be a lot of Warner stuff has been removed so far. Could this be the same dispute that has lead to Warner removing tracks from YouTube?
I'd have to agree with erikt. I've found the quality of the catalogue to be quite limited already before this and the almost complete lack of community features and any genuine, spin free, feedback from Spotify makes the service quite uninteresting once the novelty (?) factor wears off.
nesw wrote: "It appears to be a lot of Warner stuff has been removed so far." Give some examples please.
To bad the companies don't get it. My friends are everywhere so is the music. Spotify is great, but until the country restrictions are lifted spotify will not replace anything. It complements my listening but by no means the need for music will still make me have a real mp3 player. I won't have two devices for listening to music, i will just use one. I hope none of my music will be disapearing. If it does, then i am forced to. I am going to subscribe again, but i will wait until spotify shows there true color and show me why i should choose spotify as my preferred device! Old company models in a new world and they wonder why they loose money. Funny.
<sarcasm>THIS I PAY FOR?!?!?111111ONEONEONE</sarcasm>
I was wondering why when I clicked on an artist name of something in my playlist, nothing showed up, even though the music was playable in my playlist. Depending on how much of my playlist disappears, this may be the end of Spotify for me, or it may at least mean I'll take a long break and return in a year or two when enough of my playlist has re-appeared. I have an "all my music" playlist that almost entirely consists of entire albums, so some individual songs from albums still being available isn't really any consolation to me. Hopefully record companies will eventually come to their senses. Until then, it's back to illegal downloading.
I'll try and answer a number of the questions posted here. fesja - The restriction won't affect your traveling. The catalogue you here is based on your home country set in the profile. xevz - An option like this is in discussion. If you see tracks that you can play it will clearly be labeled that there is a restriction placed on by the artist or label. kerb - If you can't find a track in search right now then it will likely not be there when we make all of our changes. However that doesn't mean it is gone for good, we are not going to stop working at this until we add everything that people want to hear and more. erikt - We use our blog to inform users about all sorts of new features as well as bands that we're highlighting. We also have our GetSatisfaction forums where you'll see lot's of discussion about different topics. Unfortunately it is very hard to comment on specific features while they are still in development as we never know how they may turn out. If there is something you feel we are being secret about feel free to ask on the forums. jwagener - I agree with you fully. We will work extra hard to let users know what music is added and when and give you more visibility into that.
Thanks for the clarifications Andreas. It sucks that I can no longer listen to 'Person Pitch' by Panda Bear, or Ocky Milk by Momus (I was rather hoping I'd be seeing more Momus songs being added rather than removed). I second the call for greater transparency in what has been added (or removed). If Spotify continues expanding a 'recent updates' section could become a great selling point!
Come on guys, this is what is great from spotify and that would make me switch from deezer to spotify... country restriction!! come on! those labels needs to live in the real life, the internet breaks all those boundaries, it's time to share "really" the music, give me tons of ads for that plz!
After 3 months as a paying premium user I just cancelled my subscription. Spotify is still good, but I don´t think that we, the paying customers are getting value for our money right now. As a paying customer I would except AT LEAST the following unique features: * Be informed (in any way) about the new albums added in a particular genre (for example "metal"). * Search for a particular record label (releasing similar music to what I like).
I agree that it would be a very good idea to have a online cataloge to see what labels are in and not. Still i would have to say that it is still beta. And beta just means that it is a service not fully deployed and can change, which users should be realising when singing up...
Well, I'll stay with Spotify and continue to be a premium subscriber coz I still got plenty to listen to for the price of a medium portion of sushi per mounth. But I really hope that the music industry comes to their senses and realize that this is actually a good thing. But I guess it's a mess to handle products that companies that still think we are living in the 80:s owns the rights to. But I think Spotify could have been a bit more open about this matter because it leads to so much disappointment when users suddenly loose their favourite music. But I hope and think it will be back.
In stead of being angry with spotify. Maybe you should be angry with the artist/label in question and direct your anger at them! These greedy bastards that call themselfs artists and no longer want anything to do with spotify are just in it for the money. I say F... them. Make them pay by not buying their music!
Agree with many of the above. I support the case of Spotify, but seriously I really cant take it when The Smiths, Field Mice, Another Sunny Day and soooo many more indie classics are just removed from one day to the other. And I really would like to understand what labels are in and not, beta version or not.
Damn, I only got to try out the free version for a couple of days, but atleast I got to see the service go from completely brilliant to nearly worthless. I am happy that I was lazy with ordering a subscription.
Ah, that explains it. Keep up the VERY good work and thanks for a great service! This is still the best thing that has happened to mankind for about 2000 years.
Spotify turned FUBAR.. What's the point of a Premium Account now? Perhaps you should change the name from "Premium" to "Special but restricted"? Spotify was to good to be true, face it.
It's so sad that the record lables can't understand that country limits is something from the old world. Spotify can still be part of the new world and it would be great if the lables would want to follow us into it. Else, they will be left behind sooner or later.
Hasta la vista, Warp Records. Spotify was a good idea, but like someone else already commented it was too good to be true. I'm rather grateful that I didn't pay for a subsciption.