Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Coldplay isn’t making its latest album, Mylo Xyloto, available on Spotify or any other streaming music subscription service.

Fans will either need to purchase physical copies or MP3 downloads from places like Apple’s iTunes store, Microsoft’s Zune store or Amazon.

The reason for the decision isn’t entirely clear. An anonymous industry source told Cnet that Coldplay wants Mylo Xyloto to be heard as “one cohesive work” — which hardly makes any sense, given that the songs are available for individual purchase online.

The decision is more likely financially motivated. As one of the world’s bestselling music artists, Coldplay stands to make a great deal more money by encouraging the tens of millions of consumers who have streaming music subscriptions to purchase the songs.

Recording artists only make about three-tenths of a cent every time one of their songs is streamed, and 20 cents for every song sold on iTunes, according to estimates published in Rolling Stone.

The decision not to stream appears to be an effective one, as The Guardian points out. Adele’s latest album, 19 — which hasn’t been made available on subscription streaming services — recently broke sales records worldwide. And Mylo Xyloto is on track to hit number one.

SEE ALSO: 11 Apps and Services for Sharing, Discovering and Organizing Music

In an emailed statement, the band’s record label, EMI, said, “We always work with our artists and management on a case-by-case basis to deliver the best outcome for each release.”

Spotify, for its part, said that it respects Coldplay’s decision not to have its music on Spotify, whatever the reason. “We do however hope that they will change their minds as we believe that the Spotify model is adding, and will continue to add, huge value to the music industry,” a spokesperson said. “Right now we have already convinced millions of consumers to pay for music again, and… As we increase in scale, we will continue to re-educate millions of additional consumers as to the value of music, and we will thereby revitalize artists’ ability to make music and make money from it.”

Rhapsody declined to comment.

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Should Artists Delay Album Releases on Streaming Services?

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For popular, established artists such as Coldplay and Adele, electing to withhold their new releases from streaming services — for some time, at least — is likely a financially savvy strategy.

This is not necessarily the case for less established artists. Speaking of its client Idle Warship‘s decision to distribute its latest album on Spotify three weeks before its official release, Element 9 VP Stu Pflaum said, “I think we gain more than we lose, especially with an underground project like Idle Warship where it’s not that well known. Just getting the music in people’s hands is the ultimate goal.”

“Our web traffic has more than tripled in terms of site visitors and discussion,” he said in a separate interview with Billboard. “Nobody is pirating the album even after we’ve distributed promo copies. And most importantly, we’re getting real-time feedback from listeners on which tracks they favor and are able to adjust our marketing accordingly with most of our budget still intact. The group and the album have a legitimate buzz now.”

It will be interesting to see whether a trend is established between bestselling and lesser-known artists, and the timeliness with which each group releases new songs and albums on streaming music services.

Preferred online music service: Spotify and Rhapsody.

How often do you use these services? Just recently, just about every day.

Why do you like these services? Between the two services, I’m able to listen to an almost unimaginable amount of music. They’re not always as helpful on some of the lesser-known new bands, but I’m continually surprised by what I find. It is an endless and never-ending library.

How have these services benefitted you as a music listener? Since the launch of Spotify, I’ve been strangely shocked about just how much things have changed for me in just the past few months. When you realize you can listen to almost anything you want whenever you want, it rattles your sense of normalcy. I’ve never been into illegally downloading music unless it is something live or out of print. So now, everything is out there and basically free and available. I listen to way more music than ever before.

At home I use Sonos, and there is an iPhone app for it. So when I’m home, I basically walk around the house with my phone, changing up playlists all day long. It’s insane. But, even though I feel like a kid in a candy store, I don’t know if this is such a good thing. I know Bob Lefsetz would say it’s the best thing since Les Paul, and I will admit I love using it. But isn’t there supposed to be a bit more sacrifice that goes into choosing music? I know most record labels have been stealing from artists and consumers for years, but I fear we are making music more disposable than ever before. To me, liner notes matter. Time and the benefits of waiting for some things does have its merits. Call me crazy.

How have these services changed your music consumption patterns? I’ve found that I tend to buy more new music (I made a rule: if I listen to something on Pandora or Spotify more than 2 times, I usually buy it) since it is so easy to check out. On the other end, I tend to buy less older music. I mean, I can’t afford to buy every single thing Bob Pollard, David Bowie, and Bob Dylan have released. But I’m sort of a completist, so it’s nice to be able to hear a bit of everything. I hope 7”, B-side, weird compilation stuff starts getting more available in this space. That would be amazing. Above all, I have started buying a lot more vinyl overall. Nothing trumps that.

Name an artist you discovered on these services. Dirty Beaches, The Cave Singers, Wye Oak, The Rosebuds, Iceage, to name some off the top of my head. I tend to hear new stuff all the time. Plus, I’ve been able to get into tons of back catalog stuff of artists that I was already into.

Spotify launched stateside almost one month ago, and we’re hearing that it already has 1.4 million users signed up for its free trial. Some 175,000 folks are shelling out cash for a subscription.

The numbers come from All Things Digital, who cite “a source familiar with the company’s operations.”

We’ve reached out to Spotify for confirmation, but expect a response similar to the one we received after it was reported that the service hit 70,000 registered users after one week: “The launch of Spotify in the US has exceeded our expectations in both the response to invitations for the free service as well as subscriptions. We aren’t going to discuss numbers at this stage but we are excited to be here and confident that Americans will love Spotify as much as they already do in Europe.”

For comparison’s sake, Rhapsody recently announced that it has 800,000 users, and it launched 10 years ago. Most other music services do not report user count.

After years of derision between Spotify and U.S. record labels, UMG is out Wednesday with a playlist service called Digster that taps into Spotify’s free tier.

Billboard reports that the service is set to go live today. It’s a U.S. version of a pre-existing product in Sweden and Norway developed by Universal Music Sweden. Digster basically adds some authority to the music subscription service’s offerings, tapping music editors (UMG employees and artists) to create curated playlists from songs both on-label and off.

Playlists can be listened to via Digster or Spotify (all tiers) and users can subscribe to them just as they can subscribe to friends’ playlists. Playlist types include: “Live” playlists (regularly updated), “Digster By” (created by artists, not updated often) and “Standard” (standalone lists that are never updated). Digster also offers users recommended playlists to suit their musical tastes.

What do you think of Digster and UMG’s ardent adoption of Spotify?

Image courtesy of Flickr, Carnoodles

We could soon be listening to Spotify within Facebook, according to reports from sources close to the deal.

Forbes is reporting that the integrated service is going through testing, but when it drops (in as little as two weeks), Facebook users will see Spotify’s icon appear on the left-hand side of their newsfeed. Once you click on the image, the service will be installed on your desktop, allowing you to listen to Spotify’s catalog via Facebook. Users will also be able to listen to music with friends via Facebook.

One downside, though, should this service come to pass: It will only be available in countries with access to Spotify — tough luck, U.S.

Forbes also reports that a Spotify spokesperson claimed not to know about the new music deal with Facebook. “We have a Facebook integration. We’re continuously working with them to make that as good as it can be. But that’s the extent of our relationship,” the spokesperson said.

Spotify tells us that it continues to work with Facebook on its integration, but didn’t confirm the rumor of a partnership.

“We have a good relationship with Facebook in that we have done an integration on Facebook Platform that has been valuable in terms of driving engagement with the Spotify service,” a Spotify spokesperson tells Mashable, referring to the music streaming service’s use of Facebook Connect. “We’re continuously working together to make the social experience on Spotify the best it can be and welcome relationships with any company looking to innovate by building more social value into the user experience.”

Facebook also tells Mashable there’s nothing new to announce.

“Many of the most popular music services around the world are integrated with Facebook and we’re constantly talking to our partners about ways to improve these integrations. Specific to Spotify, we consistently point to their product as one of the best examples of using Facebook to provide people with a rich social experience,” a spokesperson tells us.

At the eGI forum in Paris on Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also implied that there’s no such deal.

So we have to take this news with a grain of salt. Remember that rumor that Google was partnering with Spotify? That ended up being false.

What do you think is in store for Spotify? Weigh in in the comment below.