Coldplay come out of darkness with ‘hippie’ album

The band will also make a pair of USA television appearances to mark the album’s release – paying a return visit to “Ellen” today and performing on “The Late Late Show with James Corden” on Monday, December 7. The album is now on subscription-only services such as Apple Music, Amazon Prime and Tidal (Coldplay frontman Chris Martin is one of Tidal’s many superstar backers), as well as MTV Trax and O2 Tracks. (Royalties from free, ad-supported streamers are significantly lower than those from paid subscribers.) It’s expected that the new record, entitled A Head Full of Dreams, will be available to stream on services like Apple Music, Rhapsody, and Tidal which don’t offer a free option. Spotify requires all music on its platform to be available to its free users, which number nearly 80 million.

Spotify refuses to give out exact “per stream” rates, calling them “a highly flawed indication of our value to artists”. Taylor Swift also generated massive sales of her 1989 album, released in 2014, having held it back from streaming, and her back catalogue now only appears on subscription-only services. “[Streaming] probably is the future, but, eh”, she said to Rolling Stone.

“I’m really, really nervous”.

MBW is told that Coldplay and their management specifically pushed for the record to be made exclusively available on Spotify’s premium tier in its opening week, but Daniel Ek’s company stuck to its guns.

“We can confirm that Coldplay’s A Head Full Of Dreams is not yet on Spotify, but we look forward to making it available very soon”.