A couple days ago an artist removed her entire back catalogue from several key streaming sites, notably Spotify. This followed the windowing of the artist’s latest release, which is now breaking sales records. The result was the entire music industry forgetting that there were in fact thousands more artists, not just the one.

In case you’re not familiar with windowing, it’s simply holding off on releasing your album on streaming for a period of time after the release date, the belief being that it will minimise the potential for cannibalised sales. Personally, I think this only works on a case by case basis, but that’s not the point here, it’s the industry and press outcry that’s followed the removal of back catalogue.

It’s pretty common for the industry press, and the wider press as a whole, to only focus on major acts – even the ‘small, up-and-coming acts that are all ‘hotly tipped’ and just happen to be on a major owned label. That’s just called business and marketing and it’s to be expected.

However, for a period of a few days, they’ve forgotten even these people exist. Instead, the entire industry now appears to hinge on one artists alone. And they’ve removed all their stuff from Spotify.
I’m sure they’d suggest that all other artists would do the same, except, there aren’t any. Just this one. And you can’t hear them on Spotify, or several other streaming sites, anymore. So I guess that’s the end of music.

Unless someone buys the album, of course. I heard a few people did that.