The war for the music streaming business is with the swords at the top, and this is demonstrated by the news that every so often appears with Apple Music and Spotify as the main protagonists. The two streaming music services use all the weapons they have in their hands in order to gain an advantage over their rival, and If Apple is getting exclusive deals with certain artists to release their albums first on Apple Music, Spotify could be punishing those artists by making their music not appear on highly relevant sites in their app.. Despite the fact that Spotify has denied these accusations, there are several artists who have allegedly denounced this practice.
Drake, Frank Ocean, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry among others have had more or less long exclusive agreements with Apple Music. These artists are the best known, and perhaps the least affected by this supposed Spotify strategy, but it seems that other less known ones are affected by it. Worse still, unknown artists are unemployed for many who appear on Beats Radio 1, Apple's radio with Zane Lowe as presenter, since it seems they would have been threatened by Spotify with relegating them to the darkest corner of their application if they agree to appear on Apple's radio show.
Spotify obviously denies these accusations, but Bloomberg assures that the information comes from very close sources and that they fully know the company's strategy. Not only is Spotify uncomfortable with Apple Music exclusives, but even Universal Music Group has prohibited all its artists from granting exclusives to Apple Music, which seems to have prevented Lady Gaga from presenting her album exclusively for Apple's streaming music service. This is just one more episode of this war, next installments, coming soon.
