January 28, 2009 17:46

Spotify forced to remove songs from library

Music streaming website's catalogue set for reduction

Music streaming service Spotify.com is being forced to remove some songs from its database because of the terms of deals chiefs have signed with record labels - and the wishes of certain musicians.

Writing on the Spotify blog, chiefs said that from next week (beginning February 2) a number of songs would be removed from the service, which allows users to listen to streaming songs free, with funding raised through advertising.

The move is being made because of the terms of deals signed with labels regarding the availability of songs in certain countries, plus the wishes of certain musicians who didn't want their music available on the service.

However, in the blog Spotify.com bosses said that once the initial song removal process was implemented there would be no further culls. "From this point on there are no plans to remove any more music and our catalogue will only grow from here," the blog read.

It continued: "We already have music from all the major labels and a vast majority of the independent labels licensed, between them we have millions of tracks that we still can add into Spotify.com. Now it’s a matter of importing that music into our system, which we are doing on an ongoing basis in an effort to add thousands of albums a week."

No details on which tracks were to be removed from the service, and in which countries, were divulged.