The notorious top 40 anarchists who literally wrote the book on conning the music industry are perhaps the least-surprising holdouts of the streaming age, having publicly deleted their back catalog and retired from recording nearly a quarter-century earlier. Legendary guitarist and King Crimson leader Robert Fripp has been a long-time critic of digital and streaming, doing the math when a couple songs of his were briefly made available on Spotify, and asking in an incredulous 2009 Internet diary entry: “Is this seriously being presented as a future for the industry?” The complex time signatures and double-digit-minute lengths of King Crimson’s most famous songs are non-existent on demand - you can’t even find a live version or a soundtrack one-off from the prog-rock greats on Spotify or Apple. “I know a lot of people really love those streaming services, and they say they hear about a lot of bands they would otherwise never hear, but how much of that translates into financially supporting those bands?”ĭe La Soul's Crowd-Funded Album Debuts at No.
“It’s just a crappy deal for the bands, exposure or not,” bassist Kathi Wilcox explained to Verge in 2015. The digital-only soundtrack to The Punk Singer, documentary about Riot Grrrl queenpin Kathleen Hannah, has made a handful of songs by the Olympia punk gods accessible to streaming, but otherwise, Bikini Kill’s EPs and albums are totally absent. (Certain albums by Tank, Toni Braxton and Timbaland & Magoo - and perhaps most upsettingly, the Romeo Must Die soundtrack - find themselves in similar limbo.) Kelly period - as most fans do - you’re out of luck, as 1996 follow-up One in a Million and her 2001 self-titled third album are widely unavailable, thanks to the distribution hell of the now-defunct Blackground Records. If your favorite Aaliyah album was her Jive debut Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number, you’re fine, as that LP (featuring Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hits “Back and Forth” and “At Your Best (You Are Love)”) is available on most streaming services.
Here are eight of the biggest names still at large, before the Internet can truly catch ’em all: Although Garth may have been the biggest name whose music was unavailable across all major services - and he’s since been joined in the streaming world by Bob Seger, Thom Yorke and (this week) Def Leppard - it’s hardly a complete set for Spotify & Co. just yet.
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