The Black Keys hesitantly brings latest albums to Spotify

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The Black Keys have caved and put two of its latest albums (2011’s El Camino and 2014’s Turn Blue) on Spotify. It wasn’t without any hesitation, though. As The Black Keys’s drummer Patrick Carney tweeted: “After five years of struggling with this we agreed to put the keys songs on Spotify. I’d rather people hear our music than not.” Carney, who has spoken out against the streaming service before, also tweeted: “No advance or money was exchanged. I’m still an advocate for artists to be paid fairly. I’m still apprehensive.”

In a 2014 interview with the Seattle Times, Carney has acknowledged that Spotify was the “way of the future” but he hopes artists were giving fair share of revenue. "My whole thing about music is: if somebody’s making money then the artist should be getting a fair cut of it," he said. "The owner of Spotify is worth something like 3 billion dollars… he’s richer than Paul McCartney and he’s 30 and he’s never written a song."

Source: Billboard

Neil Young restores catalog on music streaming services

After one year or so of swearing off music streaming services due to audio quality issues, fock/rock musician Neil Young finds his music catalog back in the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, and Deezer. His music has been on Tidal due to the streaming service offering a “HiFi” tier in its service for those who want lossless quality tunes.

Young had been concentrating on its Pono brand, which included the PonoPlayer and PonoMusic download service. Both focusing on offering maximum audio quality. However, PonoMusic has been offline since July following the acquisition of its platform provider Omnifone. Perhaps, the drop in income has made Young reconsider his position. If you’re a fan and on these services, this is good news for you.

Source: AppleInsider

Sonos partners with Amazon, adds voice support to its speakers

By early 2017, you’ll be able to use Amazon Alexa-powered devices (such as the Echo, Tap, and Dot) to control your Sonos ecosystem. Sonos has entered a long-term partnership with Amazon to introduce things like voice control to Sonos’ connected speakers. Aside from that, the Sonos system also adds Spotify Connect support, which will let you easily stream tunes on the music streaming service right into your speaker system. The support should go live in the coming weeks. Sonos earlier this year partnered with Apple to bring support for Apple Music into its system.

Source: Gizmodo

Spotify has 100 million subscribers, 30 million are paid listeners

Streaming music service Spotify revealed it has 100 million subscribers, 30 million of which pay for the service to enjoy ad-free music and the ability to save songs and playlists on a mobile device.

Despite its market dominance, Spotify reflects the delicate nature of running a streaming music service. According to Reuters, "Spotify, founded in 2006, pays more than 80 percent of its revenue to record labels and artists and has not yet shown a profit as it spends to grow internationally. Last year, it made an operating loss of 184.5 million euros ($209 million), widening from 165.1 million in 2014."

Apple Music, which competest directly with Spotify, announced last week that it had 15 million subscribers. Apple offers no free tier past a three month trial period.

Source: Reuters via Appleinsider