The musician Prince has decided to pull all his music from most streaming services except for Tidal.
Following the footsteps of Taylor Swift, Prince chose to remove his music from Spotify, along with other music streaming services like Rdio, Deezer, and Apple Music (although his music is still available on iTunes).
"Prince's publisher has asked all streaming services to remove his catalog," Spotify posted on its Prince page. "We have cooperated with the request, and hope to bring his music back as soon as possible."
While the reason he pulled his music from Spotify is unknown, the "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad" singer has publicly spoken out against the music service and others in the past on Twitter.
Prince is probably pulling his music to be rightfully paid by the services streaming his tracks, as well as it being a statement regarding artists having control over their content.
In one tweet, he includes an article from The Daily Beast called "Taylor Swift Is The New Prince," which highlights his previous history with Warner Music as he battled to gain control over his music.
"Spotify is co-owned by record labels, who hold 20 percent of the company’s stocks." - The Daily Beast https://t.co/qQtZ02OOZr
— Prince3EG (@Prince3EG) June 25, 2015
"Essentially, streaming has offered labels the ability to pay themselves twice while reducing what is owed to artists... — Prince3EG (@Prince3EG) June 25, 2015
As of now, Prince's music appears on Jay-Z's hi-definition artist-owned music streaming service Tidal. While some artists are deciding to leave other streaming services to offer their content exclusively to Tidal, interestingly enough, others such as 50 cent, Lily Allen and Mumford & Sons, are against the relaunched platform since the subscription is costly compared with others, and the platform does not support smaller artists.
Still, along with iTunes and Google Music All Access (which has not yet received a request to remove his music), Tidal is one of the few remaining platforms where Prince fans can still stream the musician's music.
The Purple Rain singer dropped a new song called "Hardrocklover" on Tidal, but those who do not have a subscription can also hear the track on SoundCloud.
Prince also pulled most of his official songs from YouTube back in November 2014. Most notably, he said that the Internet was "completely over" in an interview in 2010, saying that he didn't believe he should give new music to iTunes or any other platform if they won't pay him in advance.
Via: BBC
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