In the near future, users of the free tier of Spotify may have to wait 2 weeks before they can listen to music from independent labels. This could come after a new agreement between them and digital rights agency Merlin will see a 'windowing' option come about which as said before, is where new albums are available only to Spotify's paid subscribers for the first 2 weeks after release. This is planned to be done as a way to encourage more users to pay for their subscriptions and also provide a more 'enticing offer' to artists out there attempting to keep their music from the service. A similar agreement has also been reached with Universal, allowing the label to hold back certain albums from the free users although this has never actually been utilised for a project. This is particularly major with the label group's roster boasting artists like Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift and Kanye West.
- Merlin’s membership consists of more than 20,000 indie labels from 51 countries
I feel that this agreement will actually come to pass in that paywalls will start to be introduced for particular projects. This can be thought simply for the fact that Spotify will want to increase its population of paying subscribers as a profit-driven company as oppose to just having a majority of people on the free tier.
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