[Watch] The Black Keys Open Up About Blocking 'El Camino' Stream From Spotify

Following the release of their superb new album El Camino, a few were a little disappointed that The Black Keys didn't offer their album on websites like We7 and Spotify, ie, free streaming sites. In a recent interview with VH1 Patrick Carney opened up a little about why they did that, and rightly so:

"It's becoming more popular, but it still isn't at a point where you're able to replace royalties from record sales with royalties from streams... I think for unknown bands and smaller bands, it's a really good thing to kind of get yourself out there... for a band that makes a living selling music, it's not at a point to be feasible for us."

So in short, the amount of money you get from putting your music up for free streaming is bare minimum in comparison to record sales royalties. I can't count the amount of tweets I've seen in my feed from bands saying things along the lines of "Got paid £8 for 90000 plays. Fuck Spotify". Some artists just don't agree with the ethics of Spotify. Coldplay are another example, they similar thing recently when they released their album Mylo Xyloto not allowing it to be streamed on any sharing sites. As a result it helped them sell 80K from digital sales alone in its first week.

On the flip side, Florence and the Machine didn't stop their new album Ceremonials being stream anywhere and they then sold 94k and knocked Coldplay off the top spot. It's an argument that could go round and round. See what Patrick has to say about it at the top and let us know how you feel about streaming services.