Spotify forced to strip songs from service

Spotify – the free music streaming service – has been forced to remove “a number of songs” from its catalogue.

The Scandinavian start-up – which has proved a big hit in the PC Pro office – provides unlimited streams from an (until now) vast library of music.

However, the company admits that it’s been forced to take down some tracks and place country restrictions on others, at the behest of music labels.

“The reason for this is that our agreements contain strict rules as to what tracks can and can’t be played in various countries that we are now capable of implementing,” the company states on its blog.

“Additionally, some of the music that has been delivered to us had been delivered by mistake, even though the artist did not want their music to be included in a streaming service.”

The company insists it hasn’t lost any record label deals – it just failed to put blocks on certain tracks. “In hindsight it would have been better to remove this in October when we launched publicly – we realise this now and apologise to you for not doing it sooner,” it says.

Spotify hasn’t revealed how many tracks it’s been forced to remove. The company wasn’t available for comment at the time of publication.

However, PC Pro staff have noticed songs from artists such as Madlib, Squarepusher and Martyn have been blocked in the UK.

Tracks from most of the major artists – such as Coldplay, Michael Jackson and Paul Weller – appear to be unaffected.