Sebastian writes:

Give William Shakespeare the credit for this one. He foresaw in As You Like It that record labels who choose to “forswear the full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely monastic” would eventually relent. Here is the full text of yesterday’s Press Release from ECM:

“Press Release
ECM and Streaming

Over the past week we have begun the process of entering the world of streaming, and from November 17th, the full ECM catalogue will be available to subscribers to services including Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify, Deezer, Tidal and Qobuz. This simultaneous launch across the platforms – facilitated by a new digital distribution agreement with Universal Music – invites listeners to explore the wide range of music recorded by our artists in the course of nearly five decades of independent production.

Although ECM’s preferred mediums remain the CD and LP, the first priority is that the music should be heard. The physical catalogue and the original authorship are the crucial references for us: the complete ECM album with its artistic signature, best possible sound quality, sequence and dramaturgy intact, telling its story from beginning to end.

In recent years, ECM and the musicians have had to face unauthorized streaming of recordings via video sharing websites, plus piracy, bootlegs, and a proliferation of illegal download sites. It was important to make the catalogue accessible within a framework where copyrights are respected.

ECM Press Office
Munich, November 14, 2017″

RELEASE ENDS

UPDATE: Press Release from Universal Music with quote from Clemens Trautmann of Deutsche Grammophon on 17 November