Following in the footsteps of such musical heavy hitters as Coldplay, Adele and The Black Keys, electronic artist DeadMau5 has withheld his most recent musical release, >album title goes here<, from Spotify. The album is available on iTunes and Amazon MP3, but not available for music streaming services. While there have been no statements from either side, the belief is that DeadMau5 is partaking in what has been called “windowing”, or staggering the release of music between vendors, giving preference to services like iTunes which provide a bigger payout to artists than the streaming services like Spotify. This type of practice is bad news for streaming services and their users, who have to wait for the artist to decide if/when they’ll grant the permission to use new music rather than keeping everyone on a level playing field.

Via Digital Music News.