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f**k Def Jam & any company that goes the length of signing a kid with dreams & talent w/ no intention of following through.”įollowing that ordeal, Ocean said in interviews that his relationship with the label had improved, and eventually led to the release of Channel Orange.
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Upon debuting that for free on his Tumblr, the artist wrote on Twitter : “ i. Previously signed to the label as a songwriter under the name "Lonny Breaux," Ocean was unable to make a breakthrough until he released a free mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra under his current stage name in 2011. The disagreement over Blonde is the latest dispute between Ocean and Def Jam.

app store downloads, while Views was streamed 250 million times on Apple Music. While there have been no user stats released detailing the impact of exclusive albums, they seem to have had noteworthy payoffs: The release of The Life of Pablo drove Tidal to the top of the U.S. Tidal, meanwhile, said in March it has more than 3 million paid subscribers worldwide, a chunk of which were presumably won over with West’s album. Apple Music reported 15 million paid subscribers in June, half of Spotify’s 30 million paid subscribers, last tallied in March. “ There’s a conspiracy between Apple Music and the industry to change the game, to get everybody to pay for a subscription by putting hit content behind a paywall,” he wrote, before calling for an antitrust investigation of the company.įor the upstarts, exclusivity is one way to challenge the incumbent, Spotify. In a Sunday blog post addressing Frank Ocean’s decision to tie himself to Apple, he wrote that the practice does not help artists’ careers and that the best situation is where all listeners have access to music, regardless of the streaming service. Many have been critical of exclusive deals, including Lefsetz. Drake's partnership with the Cupertino, Calif.-based technology giant is a multi-year, eight-figure deal for the rapper, who banked $38.5 million before taxes in the 12 months prior to June, according to FORBES' calculations.

The album was only made available to other streaming services and for purchase six weeks later.Īpple, meanwhile, countered with a Drake deal that had his music appear exclusively on its services first: His fourth studio album, Views, was exclusive to Apple Music for a week following its April 29 release.
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13 via Tidal and briefly as a paid download on West’s own website before being taken down. West’s The Life of Pablo was released on Feb. 28 through Tidal it went up online for purchase the next day. Rihanna’s Anti was released for free digital download on Jan. The exclusivity battle ratcheted up in 2016 as Tidal exclusively premiered long-awaited albums by Rihanna and West. Hours later, it was available for purchase on iTunes. Dre's latest album, Compton: A Soundtrack, in July, on Dre’s The Pharmacy show. A month after Apple Music launched in June 2015, it kicked off its exclusivity plan by premiering Dr. "We’re not really in the business of paying for exclusives, because we think they’re bad for artists and they’re bad for fans," Jonathan Prince, Spotify's head of communications, told The Verge in February.īlonde was not the first high-profile exclusive for Apple.

Spotify, the world’s largest music streaming service, has previously said that it is not interested in exclusive streaming rights. This year, Tidal and Apple Music have attempted to win paying subscribers with proprietary content. Nearly three weeks on from its launch, the live stream reappeared late on Thursday, this time to the soundtrack of what appeared to be complete songs, leading fans to conclude that Ocean was streaming his much-anticipated album.The practice of offering up exclusives to streaming companies is a relatively new one, whereby labels or artists allow a service early access to a release in return for an agreed upon sum.
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“It’s about making sure the perfect aesthetic for the situation has been reached, to do that takes constant tweaking, trial and error. On Tuesday, Ocean’s producer Malay explained the delay in an interview on Reddit, saying: “Art cannot be rushed. The stream, which contained snippets of music but no vocals, ended on August 4 – with no new release from Ocean. Social media users embraced the mystery with gusto, observing as the stream progressed that the Ocean figure appeared to be assembling a spiral staircase reaching to the roof of the warehouse. When that deadline came and went, fans were somewhat appeased on 1 August with the launch of a four-day live stream at, set in a warehouse with desks and audio equipment lining the back wall, featuring a man – presumed to be Ocean – cutting wood.
