Steve Albini’s Bands Shellac and Big Black Return to Spotify

Earlier this month, Steve Albini tragically passed away just a week before the release of To All Trains, his band Shellac’s first new album in a decade. Now, the discographies of Shellac and Albini’s earlier band, Big Black, have both returned to Spotify and other DSPs.

The move comes as a bit of a surprise, considering Albini’s outspoken distaste for Spotify in the past. Always a critic of exploitation and imbalances of power — especially within the music industry — he pulled Shellac and Big Black from the platform in 2022. That same year, he even tweeted “Spotify is a terrible company and I don’t want to be part of their business.”

Nonetheless, Albini’s views on Spotify (like most of his views) were nuanced. “I don’t fault the bands who have their music on Spotify by choice,” he said in a 2022 interview. “It’s one of the few places outside of record stores where recorded music can earn anything at all, and for bands [with] more generous, honest relationships with independent labels not part of the ownership trust, then the payments from Spotify, though meager per-play, can add up to a viable income stream. Nobody’s getting rich, but it could pay for the groceries.”

Of course, Albini preferred working with those types of honest, independent labels. To All Trains, Shellac’s first new album since 2014’s Dude Incredible, arrived last week via Touch and Go Records. The album was initially available on Apple Music, YouTube, Bandcamp, and other locations, but now joins the rest of Shellac and Big Black’s discographies on Spotify itself. (It’s worth noting that Albini was fully aware of and approved of these plans prior to these plans, as detailed in an interview with TheWire).

Though, of course, the albums are still available on physical formats through Touch and Go. In Albini’s words, “Buying music directly from the bands is always the best, most efficient way of getting it, and Bandcamp, another music service, regularly has special days where they forfeit their fees, meaning that all the money goes to the bands.” The next such days where fees will be forfeited are on September 6th, October 4th, and December 6th.

In the meantime, you can stream Shellac’s new album, To All Trains, and Big Black’s magnum opus, Atomizer, on Spotify below.