In the three years since its unveiling, Spotify has become an essential part of music listening. Nearly anyone who cares even a little about music has downloaded the service by now. But while Spotify is a great resource for discovering new music, there are some bands that still aren’t allowing their music — or at least not all of their music — to appear on the service. With that in mind, here are seven great rock albums that we would really look like to see on Spotify in the future.
Dead Kennedys – Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables
The Dead Kennedys Spotify page is a bit baffling, with only a few tracks available from each of their albums. But if that weren’t bad enough, their legendary debut — which featured immortal tracks like “Kill The Poor” and “Holiday In Cambodia” — is missing from the site completely. Hopefully, this will be rectified soon, because Spotify’s music library is missing one of the most important punk albums ever recorded.
The Black Keys – El Camino
Upon Spotify’s inception in 2011, the Black Keys were one of the first artists to boycott the service. Everything from The Big Come Up to Brothers is still on the site, but their last two albums, El Camino and Turn Blue have yet to appear on the service. Or rather, Spotify represents them, but with none of the tracks and available, and a message informing us that the Keys have decided not to have their albums appear on Spotify. Let’s home they come around, so users can enjoy tracks like “Lonely Boy” and “Gold On The Ceiling at their leisure.
Radiohead – In Rainbows
As with the Black Keys, Radiohead are not big fans of Spotify, with Thom Yorke emerging as one of the most vocal critics of the service. He wasn’t able to stop the bands early Capitol output from appearing (he doesn’t own the rights to it), but after breaking off from their label with 2007’s In Rainbows, Yorke has opted out of having any of his new work appear on the service. 2013’s Amok album with Atoms For Peace, as well Yorke lone solo effort, 2006’s The Eraser also have yet to appear on Spotify.
XTC – Apple Venus 1 & 2
Everything else recorded by the legendary British post-punk band is included on Spotify, but sadly their two-part swan song is still nowhere to be found. As with many artists on this list this is a matter of a record label change. After being on Virgin Records for most of their career, XTC released this album on their own Cooking Vinyl label. Hopefully, things will get sorted out and the Apple Venus albums will be on Spotify soon, or that listeners may enjoy tracks like “I Cant Own Her” and “Your Dictionary.” The album, heavily inspired by the Beach Boys circa Pet Sounds, is one of XTC’s strongest efforts.
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band – Night Moves
Technically speaking, we could have included any of Seger’s efforts – he’s been one of Spotify’s biggest holdouts. But Night Moves is on here to represent all of Seger’s discography, because it was both of one of his best albums, and his first studio album to get much notice from mainstream audiences. Containing hits like “Rock N Roll Never Forgets,” “Sunspot Baby,” and the immortal title track, it solidified Seger as one of the stronger songwriters of the 70s.
Every Beatles Album
This is the greatest indignity of them all. After finally relenting and letting their albums be purchased on iTunes, we still have yet to see the surviving Beatles give Spotify access to their catalog. At Spotify’s inception, plenty of legendary bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath (not to mention Bob Dylan), weren’t allowing their work to appear on the site. But while many other acts have relented, The Beatles remain the biggest holdout. One figures they’ll have to relent at sometime, but considering how long the iTunes battle took, it could prove to be quite a fight.
An earlier version of this story included Pink Floyd’s The Wall. That album is on Spotify.
