Peter Kafka, writing for Recode, reports that Spotify denies that they are demoting songs in search that have been exclusives on other streaming platforms:

Spotify doesn’t like it when big-name acts take their music to Apple or Tidal first.

But it’s not punishing them when they do, by making their stuff harder to find in the music service’s search results, the company says.

That accusation, sourced to anonymous sources in a Bloomberg report out today, is “unequivocally false,” says a Spotify rep.

Good.

Ben Sisario, writing for The New York Times, details a new policy from Spotify where they give less promotion to albums on their service if they’ve been exclusives on other platforms first:

Executives at two major record labels said that in recent weeks Spotify, which has resisted exclusives, had told them that it had instituted a policy that music that had benefited from such deals on other services would not receive the same level of promotion once it arrived on Spotify; such music may not be as prominently featured or included in as many playlists, said these executives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss private negotiations. Spotify declined to comment.

It seems to be getting harder for Spotify to justify any claims that they’re artist friendly. Artists that are doing exclusives with other platforms are doing so because of the massive promotion, and in some cases monetary advantages, of locking in these deals. They’re doing what’s best for them in a world where rates-per-stream are awful (and Spotify wants them to drop even more) and this windowing strategy1 allows them to maximize their income for a small moment in time, and then push the album out broadly everywhere else and gain exposure as they tour. If the reports are true, Spotify’s trying to make that secondary broad push just a little more difficult, and therefore make the windowing strategy less attractive. I’m not a fan.