Coldplay will keep its new album off Spotify, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The band plans to premiere its seventh album "A Head Full of Dreams" only on streaming services that do not have a free tier, such as Apple Music. Spotify requires all music on its platform to be available to its free users, which number almost 80 million.
This means that Spotify's over 20 million paying customers will also be left out in the cold when "A Head Full of Dreams" arrives December 4th.
This decision comes after Adele recently made the choice to not release her album "25" on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.
Taylor Swift has also been particularly vocal in criticizing streaming services. The artist has withheld her catalog from Spotify, saying that it doesn't value her music in the proper way, and that it could cannibalize her music sales. Swift's relationship with other streaming services like Apple Music is, however, much more cordial than with Spotify.
After initially denying Apple Music access to her albums because it was not going to pay artists during a free trial period, Swift publicly reconciled with the company and made her music available on the platform.
"Apple treated me like I was a voice of a creative community that they actually cared about," she said to Vanity Fair. "And I found it really ironic that the multibillion-dollar company reacted to criticism with humility, and the startup with no cash flow reacted to criticism like a corporate machine."
Part of the issue for many artists seems to be the idea of a "free tier," which they presumably think is working to drive down artist payouts more generally. Coldplay's decision to make its album available on Apple Music but not Spotify puts this in focus.
Others in the music industry have pointed to this factor as well. Pandora CEO Brian McAndrews has called free music on-demand an unsustainable business model, and sees it as a negative force in the industry.
Spotify provided Business Insider with this statement:
"We can confirm that Coldplay's A Head Full Of Dreams is not yet on Spotify, but we look forward to making it available very soon."