Spotify gets ‘Comfortably Numb’
Music service gains access to entire Pink Floyd catalog
LOS ANGELES – Another brick in the wall – the one that’s separated Pink Floyd fans from the band’s music on Spotify – came down Monday.
The legendary rock group, one of the last major holdouts from Spotify’s vast catalog of streamable music, announced that its oeuvre would go live on Spotify after fans played a millionth stream of its single “Wish You Were Here” on the service.
Though it’s certainly an occasion for prog fans on Spotify to celebrate, the news isn’t entirely unprecedented for the band. Its catalog has long been featured on other services, including Rhapsody and Rdio.
Pink Floyd’s Spotify holdout began in 2010 when the band demanded that its work not be featured in the ad-supported free version of the program, preferring that it only be accessible behind a paywall without ads.
However, the group’s members seem to have had a change of heart and went all-in: Now its entire catalog is up for streaming in all versions of the service, and only Spotify has the band’s complete catalog.
With the service landing a similar deal for Metallica’s catalog, that shrinks the list of Spotify holdouts to a few major names, including Taylor Swift and Led Zeppelin, who are trying to negotiate deals with streaming services.