Adele's manager: 'Streaming's the future, whether people like it or not

But Jonathan Dickins wants Spotify to change policy of not allowing some albums to be restricted to paying subscribers only

 
Adele’s last album took its time to reach streaming music services. Photograph: Richard Young/REX/Richard Young/REX

Adele’s manager has backed streaming services like Spotify as the future of music, but warned the company that it may need to change its policy of insisting all albums be made available on both its free and premium tiers.
“Personally, I think streaming’s the future, whether people like it or not, but I don’t believe one size necessarily fits all with streaming,” said Jonathan Dickins, speaking at the Web Summit conference in Dublin this afternoon.
He was responding to a question about Taylor Swift’s back catalogue being removed from Spotify earlier in the week.
“Spotify have always been pictured as the bad guys in this, but the biggest music streamer out there is YouTube, without a doubt,” he said, pointing out that when artists or labels remove music from Spotify, it is often still easy to find it on YouTube.
“If I make a search now for Taylor Swift on YouTube, give me 30 seconds and I can have the whole Taylor Swift album there streamed. Some of it’s ad-supported, so there is revenue, and some of it’s not,” he said.
“On the one hand, labels are trumpeting YouTube as a marketing tool: 10 million views on YouTube and it’s a marketing stroke of genius. But on the other hand they’re looking at 10 million streams on Spotify and saying that’s x amount of lost sales.”
He elaborated on his theory that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to streaming, suggesting that Spotify could “make it easier for themselves” by relenting in its policy of having albums available to all its users, rather than allowing some to be restricted to its paying customers.
“The premium tier to me are real active record buyers, paying their $9.99 or €9.99 or £9.99 a month. My feeling would be to get around the situation with someone like Taylor Swift – but Spotify won’t do it – is a window between making something available on the premium service, earlier than it’s made available on the free service.”
Dickins has first-hand experience of this policy, with reports in 2012 that Spotify refused to allow Adele’s last album 21 to be made available in this way. The album was added to the service later that year.
Even so, he was positive about the prospects for streaming overall, and Spotify in particular. “It’s all about scale. Spotify will work if they get enough payers.”
Dickins, who also manages artists and producers including London Grammar, Jamie T, Rick Rubin and Paul Epworth, was speaking as part of a panel of managers alongside Jeff Jampol, who manages The Doors and The Ramones, along with the estates of other artists.