The battle for musicians to receive payment for their music from streaming services has resulted in an unusual move by one artist. Prince has started to request that all streaming services pulls his back catalog of tracks from their collections, with Spotify being one of the first to remove the singer’s music, though according to a report, the struggling Tidal will apparently continue streaming Prince’s songs to subscribers.
According to Billboard, all streaming services have been handed pull requests, with Tidal being the exception. Spotify’s artist page for the musician states “Prince’s publisher has asked all streaming services to remove his catalog. We have cooperated with the request, and hope to bring his music back as soon as possible.” The tracks have also been pulled from Rdio, with Deezer advising to TechCrunch that it too has received the request and is in the process of removing songs.
So far, it appears that Google has yet to receive a notification from Prince’s publisher, with all tracks still playable. Apple Music does not include Prince songs for streaming at all. As for why Tidal seems to have escaped the notices, it may be down to an existing relationship between the artist and the service, with Tidal previously streaming the Rally 4 Peace concert in May.
While Prince has not given a direct statement about the removals, he has recently appeared on Twitter to comment about an article by The Daily Beast about the relationship between music artists, record labels, and streaming services. He also quotes himself from the article in a tweet, stating “Spotify is co-owned by the record labels, who hold 20 percent of the company’s stocks,” and “Essentially, streaming has offered labels the ability to pay themselves twice while reducing what is owed to artists, from pennies on the dollar to fractions of pennies on the dollar.“
