Adele's fourth album ("30") has been on the market since Friday and Spotify subscribers who have no weakness for the Britons songs may have noticed the change by now.

For paying users, songs from an album are now played in the order in which they are in the tracklist by default.

So far, random playback has been the standard - much to Adele's displeasure, not least. 

Benjamin Fischer

Editor in business.

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"That was the only wish I had in our ever-changing industry," she tweeted on Saturday in response to the move by the music streaming market leader. After all, artists worked so carefully on their albums for a reason. “Our art tells a story and our stories should be heard the way we intended them to be. Thanks for listening, Spotify. ”The Swedish service responded on Twitter with a simple“ Everything for you ”.

The answer to a request from the FAZ sounds a little more sober: “As Adele mentioned, we are pleased to announce a new feature of Spotify Premium that listeners and artists have long wanted.

With this function, we have made the play button standard for all albums. ”If you prefer random playback, which Apple once made popular with the iPod, you can of course easily set this again manually.

Adele was skeptical about streaming for a long time

It is hard to say what part Adele will have in the changeover. However, the relationship between Spotify and the 33-year-old British woman has definitely been worse. A few years ago she was one of the most prominent streaming critics alongside Taylor Swift. In December 2015, she told Time magazine that she would not stream music, but would continue to buy it, as music consumption via Spotify & Co seemed interchangeable to her.

“I know that streaming is the future, but it's not the only way to consume music,” Adele said at the time. She could not commit to something that she did not know how comfortable she felt with it and stressed that she was proud of her decision - "even if the album had turned out to be a flop." This fate did not overtake "25" of course . It sold almost 20 million digitally and physically until - around seven months later - it was also made available on the streaming services.

At "30" this approach was apparently not an option for Adele and her label partner Columbia Records from Sony Music.

However, streaming also represented 13.4 billion of the total sales of 21.6 billion dollars in the global music recording market last year.

In 2015 it was $ 2.8 billion out of a total of $ 14.5 billion.

The downside of the vinyl boom

The physical business is shrinking, but is still important - especially for small and medium-sized artists such as labels.

Vinyl in particular represents a considerable part of sales.

Of course, the big players in the industry also want to participate in the record boom.

In the case of "30", Sony has had more than 500,000 plates pressed, according to the industry website Variety.

A plausible number when compared to those from other major publications.

The bulk order, like the one for the Abba comeback or the current Taylor Swift album, falls into a phase where the jam in the press shop is getting longer and longer.

The demand had far exceeded the supply of press capacities even before the pandemic.

For some time now, however, the scarcity of raw materials and the associated bottlenecks and price increases have further exacerbated the situation.

As a result, albums have been postponed, sometimes completely, sometimes only physically while a work can already be heard digitally.

Some plants therefore prioritize large orders, said Jörg Hahn, the managing director of Optimal Media, one of the largest plants in Europe, recently told FAZ Sony in turn that they are planning additional capacities for 2022 - possibly also for reprints of “30.