ADELE EXPLAINS STREAMING DECISION

While you—and we—were away, Adele sat for a series of interviews with Time magazine, one of which focused on her reasons for withholding 25 from the streaming services.

“I believe music should be an event,” she said explained, speaking for the first time about the decision. “For me, all albums that come out, I’m excited about leading up to release day. I don’t use streaming. I buy my music. I download it, and I buy a physical [copy] just to make up for the fact that someone else somewhere isn’t. It’s a bit disposable, streaming.

“I know that streaming music is the future, but it’s not the only way to consume music,” she continued. “I can’t pledge allegiance to something that I don’t know how I feel about yet.”

Adele made the choice herself not to stream the album. “I’m proud of my decision,” she said. “I would have been proud even if the album flopped. I would have been proud because I stuck to my guns, and I think it’s really important as an artist that you do that.”

Adele’s decision follows Taylor Swift’s removal of her catalog from Spotify in 2014; a few months back, she managed to convince Apple to reverse its decision not to compensate artists during Apple Music’s 90-day free trial later. “It was amazing,” she said of Swift’s stand. “I love her—how powerful she is. We’ll get lumped together now because of it, but I think we would both feel the ability to say yes or no to things even if we weren’t successful.”

You can read the entire cover-story Q&A here.