The Black Keys’ New Album Is Not Streaming

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Were you looking for El Camino on Spotify, Rdio, MOG, or Rhapsody today? Well, if you had a hard time finding it, turns out there was a good reason.

The latest Black Keys album, El Camino, is not available on Spotify, Rdio, or Rhapsody, despite an official release this morning. The album is, however, available and well-positioned on the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3, and early sources to Digital Music News are pointing to a Coldplay-like licensing refusal.[DigitalMusicNews]

As some people might have observed from the quote above, refusing to license your album for streaming is not an altogether new idea, Coldplay has also refused to license Mylo Xyloto to any streaming services as of yet (though it was sold for $1.99 on Google Music for one day). MOG actually sent out an email this advertising that they had El Camino available today, but then later pulled it, explaining that the rights were delivered, “by mistake.” It’s not known whether the album will be eventually delivered to any streaming services, but if the music eventually makes its way into the cloud, these two bands could be on the forefront of a new “digital streaming window” strategy (a la Netflix). I’m not sure exactly which side of this issue I will eventually come out on, but if you asked me now, I think a window kind of makes sense.