Spotify music catalogue

Why can’t I find a track, album or artist I’m looking for?

We aim to have all the world’s music available at Spotify. We are still in the process of acquiring licenses to all music in the world (!), therefore it is possible that you won’t be able to find some of your favourite artists or tracks right now. We are signing new labels and adding a great amount of new tracks every week. Hopefully your favorite music will be up soon.

Unfortunately there are some artists who have opted not to be a part of Spotify at this point in time. Some frequently requested artists that are not in Spotify include Metallica, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. We hope that they change their minds regarding streaming soon!

Why isn't an artist or album available in all countries?

In the copyright jungle, music rights are often divided among many different right holders in different geographical territories. That is, an artist may have licensed his or her music worldwide, except for UK, using a large record label that we have an agreement with. However, the artist may have licensed his or her music to a small label in UK that we do not have an agreement with, resulting in that Spotify has the music in all countries except UK until we have signed with that specific label

In other cases, one record label has the rights to a certain artist in all countries, but choose not to launch that artist in all countries. We’re constantly trying to get our content providers to diverge from these types of territorial restrictions and hope to have all music available in all countries.

Why has a track or an artist disappeared?

As all content is licensed from a number of rights holders there are cases where a rights holder asks for content to be withdrawn. This can happen in some cases where the rights are sold to another rights holder, perhaps one we don’t have an agreement with yet, or if a rights holder has decided to not license music to ad-funded streaming services any longer. This can create a gap where Spotify doesn’t have the music for a while. We promise that we’ll try to get the music back!

Will Spotify add lyrics, videos, podcasts, audiobooks etc.?

This is an interesting idea but at the moment we need to focus on building a music service with the biggest music-library out there. Having that said, if you have any interesting ideas or tips that you want to communicate to us, please do so in our support forum.

Can I make more advanced searches?

Yes, you can search for genres by writing genre: followed by the genre you want to find, like genre:Trip-hop. You can do the same thing with release years for albums by writing year: and the year you want. You can even specify a range, like year:1979-1982. Other searches to play with are artist:, album: and track:. There are some more examples in this page.