Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

MUSIC

Sweden’s Spotify reels in new Beatles music fans

After streaming firms including Spotify reached a deal to include tracks by The Beatles for the first time, 'Come Together' has become the most-played track by fans new and old.

Published: 28 December 2015 13:13 CET
Sweden's Spotify reels in new Beatles music fans
The Beatles performing in New York in 1964. Photo: Dan Grossi/TT

The best-selling band in history ended a long boycott and made its catalogue available through streaming, last Thursday, just in time for Christmas.

Swedish firm Spotify, the largest streaming service, said that fans in the first three days had streamed Beatles songs 70 million times — which means that on average every user of the site listened to one Beatles song around the Christmas holiday.

'Come Together' was well ahead as the most popular song, with more than 2.3 million streams as of early Monday on Spotify.

While the company did not offer analysis, the bluesy rock song from 1969 was the opener on 'Abbey Road', The Beatles' best-selling album, so it may have benefited from listeners who immediately hit play on the album.

'Here Comes the Sun', also off 'Abbey Road' was also among the most listened to, although it was outpaced by two other Beatles tunes with themes of hope — 'Let It Be' and 'Hey Jude'.

Spotify said that 65 percent of its Beatles listeners were under the age of 34 — too young to have direct memories of a band which broke up in 1970.

“We're helping introduce a new generation of fans to the most important band in history,” Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a blog posting.

Spotify has been beset by criticism by artists, notably Taylor Swift, who argue that the streaming service does not pay back enough to artists.

The company has disputed the charges and tried to portray streaming as a rare source of growth in a largely stagnant music industry.

Ek, 32, described The Beatles' arrival on Spotify as a “personal triumph” in light of the Swedish entrepreneur's own childhood.

“My grandmother was into jazz and my grandfather was an opera singer. The one thing in my youth that everyone in my family — my mom, uncle, aunt and grandparents — could all agree on musically was The Beatles,” he wrote.

Unlike a growing number of artists who have forged exclusive deals, The Beatles are streaming on all major services including Apple Music, Deezer, Google Play Music, Rhapsody and Tidal, as well as Sweden's Spotify.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

SHOW COMMENTS