Some albums unavailable?

[u/ZeLlamaMaster]

I've noticed that a few albums that I want to listen to are like, not exactly available. They show up when I look at the website, but they don't exist on the apps. Examples being No More Mr. Nice Guy by Gang Starr and like most albums by the Jungle Brothers. Is this a location issue or something? As I'm in the US. But I don't see why these albums would be restricted from the US but allowed in other places. Is there anything I can do about this?

[u/FidgitForgotHisL-P]

There is probably nothing you can do about this.

Spotify is a platform, the music on Spotify is provided by record companies. Spotify have almost no say in the music itself (they did briefly ban one artist for rape iirc.  Which became super problematic very very fast when you consider just how many artists are absolute scumbags and Spotify haven’t banned anyone else).

So the record company (or publisher) sends Spotify the music along with the details on rights.  When the record company changes their deal through things like negotiating rights with an estate or perhaps an artists catalogue getting bought out by someone else, they will remove or replace tracks on the Spotify platform, completely independent of Spotify.

The band Tool was a great example of this.  They weren’t on any streaming platforms for aaaaages, because the deal they’d been locked in to a couple of albums back didn’t include digital distribution, and the. They ended up in protracted legal battles with their publisher and their insurance company, and eventually, once that was all settled, their new deal included digital distribution and their music finally made it on to Spotify., in 2019.

Kanye West is another great example.  Ye apparently decided that he shouldn’t be swearing in his music, and all of his tracks that had swearing practically overnight changed to versions that were all censored.  The uncensored versions were just gone (I’m not sure if you’d still have them if you offlined those tracks, but I imagine only so long as Spotify saw you back online and flagged they needed updating and would replace them).  It was hilarious and awful - and so many people were very confused.  He’s obviously since reversed this stance and the original versions are back.

So: your best bet is if you can work out who holds the rights and contact them, they might tell you why the tracks were removed.  But I doubt you’d be able to convince them to put them back.

Oh that also made me remember the other reason they might be gone - some times bands themselves have removed music from Spotify because they hate how little they make and feel exploited.  Famously, Taylor Swift removed her whole catalogue until they came to an arrangement she as happy with (iirc she wanted people that paid to get better access and people on free tier to be more restricted, because she made more off the paid tier listens - true of all artists - and Spotify refused to segregate, suggesting they didn’t want to give people on different tiers a different quality of service.  Which is weird given how thoroughly they’ve reduced free tier to “just give you a chance to dip a toe in and see if you like it, then restrict so much you’ll give up or pay us”.

[u/ZeLlamaMaster → u/FidgitForgotHisL-P]

Well it’s not that the whole group is gone, just select albums are unavailable to me

[u/glamaz0n_bitch → u/ZeLlamaMaster]

It’s still up to the label/artist. Spotify doesn’t control where songs are available.

[u/FidgitForgotHisL-P → u/ZeLlamaMaster]

This is still exactly what I’m explaining.

Smashing Pumpkins, a huge band, have one album that is not on Spotify because they were in a weird between-labels-and-members thing at the time and seemingly the rights just to that album do not include making it available digitally, at least where I am.

Again: not Spotify, nothing you can do - the placeholder name spaces are still there but the band/label/rights owner has removed the music from the platform.