For those music streaming fans about to rock, we salute you. Three years after the group made its digital debut on the iTunes Store, Australian rock legends AC/DC are now streaming. At this writing, AC/DC’s catalog was live on Rdio and Spotify. The band is expected to show up on Apple Music when it launches later Tuesday, according to The New York Times.
Prior to 2012, AC/DC was one of the few major holdouts from the digital music revolution. The band opposed the notion of selling their music as singles instead of whole albums, as guitarist Angus Young told The Telegraph in 2008.
Eventually, however, the band succumbed to the times and by November 2012 the company’s catalog was available in iTunes. Now, all of AC/DC’s hits are available to stream, including Thunderstruck, Back in Black, Highway to Hell, Who Made Who and You Shook Me All Night Long.
AC/DC follows a number of other streaming holdouts who eventually gave in. Metallica puts its catalog on the streaming services in 2012 . Pink Floyd joined Spotify in June 2013 with a promotional effort requiring one million people to ‘wish’ for it, and Led Zeppelin joined that same year.
The story behind the story: AC/DC comes to streaming just as services like Spotify come under fire for the freemium model, most famously from Taylor Swift. Unlike Apple Music, which will only offer a free three-month trial to users later today, Spotify welcomes non-paying users with an ad-supported version that has limited mobile features. Swift opposed free tiers from Spotify and similar services blaming them for the devaluing of music.
Now that we’re thunderstruck, will the thunder roll?
The catalog of Spotify and other streaming services is pretty hefty, but it’s still got some big holes in it, especially if you’re a country music fan. Of course, I’m talking about Garth Brooks, who isn’t going anywhere near music streaming yet. The singer only embraced digital music last July when he started selling his albums on his own website.
That situation isn’t likely to change anytime soon. In November, he called YouTube “the devil” and applauded Taylor Swift’s Spotify pull out.