Clearly, Adele and her team – including September Management, plus labels Beggars/XL and Sony/Columbia – believe now is the right time to open the album up to a wider listening base through the likes of Spotify and Apple Music.
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Seven months have passed since 25 was released and was kept away from streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify. Only a few tracks from the album – “Hello”, “When We Were Young”, and “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)” – were made available when they were released as singles, but everything else was kept off all streaming services.
The news of 25’s surprise arrival on Spotify was revealed by listeners in New Zealand and Australia, where it is now “tomorrow” (June 24) for the United Kingdom and US.
But not making 25 available to stream didn’t hurt it’s sales any, and the album broke the single-week sales record when it was released this past November. “I don’t use streaming”, she said. Streaming, she added, has chipped away at the value of songs and albums. “I buy my music”. “I can’t pledge allegiance to something that I don’t know how I feel about yet”.
The 25 album outsold Taylor Swift’s similarly numerical 1989 by more than a factor of three and both artists have seemingly been helped by their general aversion to streaming services.
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“I know that streaming music is the future, but it’s not the only way to consume music…”
