Oh, the humanity!
Updated 12/15
Earlier this week, Led Zeppelin's first two albums were added to Spotify's ever-growing library, which now stands at just shy of 33 million songs. The band is doing a staggered launch of their entire catalog on the streaming service over the next five days (click on album titles to listen - check back daily as HERC will update the links):
12/11 WED:
- Led Zeppelin I [January 12, 1969]
- Led Zeppelin II [October 22, 1969]
12/12 THU:
- Led Zeppelin III [October 5, 1970]
- the untitled fourth album [November 8, 1971]
12/13 FRI:
- Houses Of The Holy [March 28, 1973]
- Physical Graffiti [February 24, 1975]
12/14 SAT:
- Presence [March 31, 1976]
- In Through The Out Door [August 15, 1979]
12/15 SUN:
- The Song Remains the Same [September 28, 1976] live soundtrack album
- Coda [November 19, 1982] leftovers
- BBC Sessions [November 11, 1977]
- How the West Was Won [May 27, 2003] live
- Mothership [November 12, 2007] hits collection
- The Complete Studio Albums [November 4, 2008]
- Celebration Day [November 19, 2012] recorded at their December 10, 2007 concert
As of December 15, 2013, all previously released Led Zeppelin tracks are on Spotify EXCEPT these:
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- "Baby Come On Home" (recorded 1968, appeared on Boxed Set 2, 1993)
- "Travelling Riverside Blues" (recorded 1969, appeared on Boxed Set, 1990)
- "White Summer/Black Mountain Side" (recorded 1969, appeared on Boxed Set, 1990)
- "Hey Hey What Can I Do" (recorded 1970, appeared on b-side to "Immigrant Song" single, 1970)
A quick look at the band's Discography page on Spotify shows a new wrinkle in Spotify's marketing strategy - the ability to order merch:
Found on SpotifyArtists page:
Concerts & Merchandise
In addition to helping artists understand their audience, we are also excited to provide artists with two new features that will enhance the business value of their audience on our service: ticketing and merchandise listings right inside of Spotify, for free!
First, we have now rolled out concert listings within our service on both desktop and iPhone. All Spotify users can see when their favorite artists are playing shows in their areas, browse more information about the shows, and click to buy tickets immediately. These listings, powered by Songkick, are appearing throughout the service, on Artist Pages, and in users’ Discover feeds. This great feature will allow artists to sell more tickets to their fans in the most relevant possible context, and already, over 2 million concerts are being browsed on Spotify every month.
In the upcoming months, we will also be the first music service to roll-out merchandise listings within our apps in partnership with Topspin . As with concerts, this approach will allow fans to see and buy new items from their favorite artists while providing artists a valuable new channel to advertise their Topspin merch offers. Any artist will be able to easily upload and display merch on Spotify (linking to their own merch store) using Topspin’s proven tools, and best of all, we’ll be offering this service for free!
The additions of concert listings and merchandise sales are the first steps in what will be an ongoing effort to bring additional revenue opportunities to artists on top of Spotify’s growing royalty payouts.
Check out that Discography page to see the full animation of the title graphic. (HERC couldn't find a way to link to the page. Sorry. Just type led zeppelin in the Spotify search bar and see what comes up.) He did notice that users now have the ability to embed Artist links through the Share menu. Or is it just new to him?
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The best comment HERC has read on Zeppelin's arrival on Spotify comes from Cory, his twenty-four year old nephew and a Spotify Premium member, who texted the message below, spelling error and all:
The free streaming on portable devices almost made HERC lose his lunch as he spent quite a few bucks buying Spotify Gift Cards for friends and family this Christmas but it turns out not to be the full blown Spotify experience, which is a truly beautiful thing for music fans. You can listen to the artist of your choice or playlist of your choice but the streams will play in random order - to hear your exact choices on demand, you still have to pony up $10 a month. Those of you without the Premium service who use Spotify on your mobile devices will have to let HERC know how the experience is. Hopefully, it will be good enough to make you want to upgrade. What say you?
*Here's what Spotify posted:
I applaud when more artists/labels step up and put things out on streaming sites like Spotify. All the better for us to sample the music before we buy.
ReplyDeleteBetter for fans and better for the music makers themselves. When perpetual money-makers like Eagles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin cast their lot with Spotify, that is a ringing endorsement.
ReplyDeleteThe artists avoiding Spotify or worse yet pulling their stuff from Spotify after users have put the music in playlists, are leaving money on the table. It seems a lot like the high school dropout holding out for a management position.