The way Frank Ocean released his new album “Blonde” has meant Universal Music are to stop releasing any more albums as streaming exclusives.
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This year there has been numerous exclusive album releases via Apple Music or TIDAL.
The only other streaming service that competes with Apple Music for exclusives is Tidal, whose biggest scores came from Beyonce, Kanye and Rhianna due to their connections with Jay Z. Spotify has reportedly debated getting into the exclusives arms race but its still struggling to turn a profit before its IPO.
This is a big move, as the umbrella company is home to almost 80 record labels including Interscope, Capitol and Def Jam, along with artist-ran minor labels like Kanye West’s GOOD Music, Cash Money, Dr. Dre’s Aftermath, Eminem’s Shady and J. Cole’s Dreamville. “We’ve got an industry that promotes marginal products that appeal to few and makes them unavailable to most people?”
The practice of creating streaming exclusive albums creates an issue of accessibility, as Lefsetz points out.
Though, of course, even if Universal is making it default policy not to do exclusivity deals with the streaming services, numerous big name artists who the digital platforms would want such deals with anyway will have the power or influence to force their label’s hand if they really want to ally with a Tidal or an Apple on one project or another.
Though a cynic – if you could find such a thing – might wonder whether a major label being down on streaming exclusives was entirely motivated by the interests of the fan. We all gon be dead in 100 Years.
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This all follows the release of Frank Ocean’s long-awaited “Blonde” album that was released earlier this week exclusively through Apple. The end result being that Universal/Def Jam’s Endless is available to stream on Apple Music, where it serves as little more than a posh advert for Blond, which is being sold in more traditional cash-up-front formats with said cash going to Ocean.
