Beyonce cemented her status as the queen of surprise releases on Saturday, releasing a completely new album and videos called “Lemonade” via a widely anticipated one-hour special on cable network HBO.
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Anyone who buys the album will be given a 90-day free trial for Tidal.
Streaming services are continually getting better, but the practice of selling exclusive albums and creating exclusivity windows – where fans on certain platforms can’t listen to new music for a period of time – is encouraging piracy once again.
By Monday morning, iTunes customers were able to purchase the 12-track album along with the hourlong video special, and Amazon was taking pre-orders for a CD/DVD to be released May 6. Was it an announcement that she is divorcing her husband Jay-Z?
Tidal has had some success in landing in-demand albums exclusively in recent months, including Rihanna’s “Anti” and Kanye West’s “The Life of Pablo”.
As Tidal’s period of exclusivity is actually quite short – a mere 24 hours – audio of Bey’s rippling vocal chords and clips of her perfectly toned, gyrating bod have now also been released on Apple’s iTunes. “They have, in one week, changed the entire narrative of their business, which was, ‘It’s not doing well, to, ‘Oh my gosh, you have to go to Tidal, ‘” editor Janice Min, who oversees Billboard, said Sunday on CNN’s ” Reliable Sources”.
Like much of her music over the last few years, the music on “Lemonade” is not made for pop radio.
We believe long-term exclusives are bad for artists and they’re bad for fans.
It’s not the first time an artist has decided to make an album exclusive to one streaming platform.
As of press time, a rep for Tidal declined to comment on any boost in new subscribers since Prince’s death. “Becky” is urban slang for “white girl” while “good hair” can mean “straight hair”.
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Beyonce reinforces the maternal theme with a snippet from her own late grandmother, Agnez Dereon, who says: “I had my ups and downs but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up”.
