AppleInsider Staff
Grammy Award-winner Adele's latest album, "25," was made available for streaming through a variety of services at midnight on Friday, including Apple Music and Spotify, some seven months after initial release.
Streaming availability was announced on Thursday as subscribers in countries like Australia gained access to the hit album, reports Billboard. The rollout is being handled on a market-by-market basis, with Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal and Amazon Prime all confirming Friday availability for paying members.
Adele's "25" makes its streaming debut seven months after Sony released digital and physical copies of the hotly anticipated follow-up to "21" in November. With chart-topping tracks like "Hello" and "When We Were Young," the album moved a record-smashing 3.38 million copies in its first week of sales, including digital downloads.
A report last year said Adele's camp moved to keep "25" off Spotify at launch unless the streaming music giant restricted playback to paying subscribers, though Spotify refuted those claims. It was also suggested that Apple had approached the singer with an exclusivity deal, presumably in hopes of replicating the huge success seen with a Beyonce exclusive in 2013.
Exclusive content is becoming an increasingly important marketing tool as the music industry moves toward all-you-can-eat streaming distribution models. With a pure subscription model Apple Music locked down its first big-name act when Taylor Swift agreed to license "1989" when it debuted last year. Competitor Spotify, which operates a free-to-stream tier, has seen mixed results, notably missing out on "1989" due to an ongoing dispute over royalties.
Most recently, Apple Music in May snagged Chance the Rapper's album "Coloring Book," which subsequently became the first streaming exclusive to debut in the top ten of the Billboard 200 albums chart.
Christine McKee
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
12 Comments
And....nobody cares! :p
Seriously, who the hell cares. Her new singles became so annoying in the meantime that having the whole album available for streaming is basically irrelevant at this point. Or maybe this indicates that it only took 7 months for people to stop buying that album, so she eventually gave up and realized streaming services may actually generate some additional income after all. Maybe it's just me but I never understood why they're making such a big music icon out of this woman, because she's no better or worse than thousands of other artists and why there's so much hype around her, that's just completely beyond me. Even Taylor Swift has made much more clever moves in regards to streaming and in fact her music is so much better than whatever Adele has ever produced. Sorry, I just had to vent out :)
Even though I am not an Adele fan, I will say this. Her manager is brilliant. The amount of money he helps her (and himself) rake in is astounding. All by knowing the right tactics of holding out, waiting for the right terms etc. It is great business management.