Spotify has had the streaming music market cornered for a few years now, with old stalwarts like Pandora and Rhapsody steadily holding their own in the margins, but relative newcomer Tidal holds a valuable utility: the support of artists who otherwise resent streaming music services.
On Wednesday, Mashable reports, the music of R&B-pop artist Prince — who in 2010 famously announced that the Internet was “completely over” — disappeared from every streaming service other than the eight-month-old company acquired by rapper-cum-music-mogul Jay Z this past March.
“Prince’s publisher has asked all streaming services to remove his catalog,” a spokesperson for Spotify told Mashable. “We have cooperated with the request, and hope to bring his music back as soon as possible.”
The Spotify representative apparently failed to check Tidal, where as of Thursday morning the Prince anthology — 24 albums, 20 singles and EPs, three versions of “When Doves Cry” — awaits the service’s nearly 800,000 subscribers.
Prince’s decision marks the second major industry coup in just three months for the fledgling company, which has retained rights to the music of Taylor Swift in spite of the artist’s very public hostility toward subscription-based streaming music.
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