The Black Keys are the latest in a long list of artists who are refusing to supply their music to streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora, but drummer Patrick Carney explained their reasoning in a way that is difficult to argue with.
“We decided for this album to not allow music services to stream the entire album,” Carney told VH1. “It’s becoming more popular, but it still isn’t at a point where you’re able to replace royalties from record sales with royalties from streams. It felt unfair to people who purchased our album to allow people to go on a website and stream the album for free whenever they want it. I think for unknown bands and smaller bands it’s a really good thing to get yourself out there, especially something like Pandora where you get a mixed up playlist that introduces you to new stuff, but for a band that makes a living selling music, it’s not at a point yet to be feasible for us. Maybe in a couple of years we’ll allow that album to be streamed, but there’s a lot of stuff about these services that people don’t really know. It’s kind of set up to be a little bit more fair to the labels than it is for the artists I think, so that’s why we made that decision. That said, we do allow the Lonely Boy song to be streamed.
“We have to walk a fine line about how to do it without losing mystique and without putting yourself out there so much that fans just expect everything to be free,” he added.
While they might have joined Coldplay and Adele in blocking their music in the U.S., the newly launched JB Hi-Fi NOW in Australia has their latest album El Camino available to stream.
