Streaming services face new test with Coldplay

Los Angeles

FIRST Taylor Swift kept 1989 off free music streaming services and scored the best weekly album sales in more than a decade. Then Adele spurned Spotify and Apple Music with her new 25 and did one better: She shattered the record for opening week sales, set in 2000 by the boy band *NSYNC.

Is Coldplay next? The British rock group, which is scheduled to release A Head Full of Dreams on Friday, has yet to say whether the new album will be available on streaming services.

Some of the biggest recording artists, while making a few new tracks available for streaming, are withholding music to boost album purchases, which generate more r…