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New Jay Z Album '4:44' Will Be Sprint-Tidal Exclusive

I wonder when these companies will realize that paying for exclusives only benefits the artist side of the equation. The artist gets some upfront money. Companies like Apple, Sprint, etc. don't really pick up new customers based on the exclusives, and all the exclusives are on the internet 5 minutes after they debut.

MacRumors said:
...Tidal, which claims as many as 3 million subscribers. That contrasts with Spotify's claimed 50 million paying subscribers, with Apple Music now on 27 million subscribers
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Hmmm, Tidal claims their subscription numbers. Would you look at that... Spotify also claims their subscription numbers.
Does Apple Music claim it's subscription numbers? Nope. Their numbers just... are.:rolleyes: I'm not definitively saying there's a biased slant to the authors writing, but I am gonna claim there is.:cool:
 
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shocking *eye roll*

still not going to save your streaming service Shawn.

edit: to be clear, I think he has every right to do this. My comment is that I'm not surprised the major stakeholder in a service makes his new release exclusive to that service and I still expect Tidal to fail in the shadow of the big players.
 
And then him and Kanye are the first to bitch and complain about piracy on the internet and how they have to put a stop to it.... By making your stuff exclusive to a crappy service nobody wants to pay for you are increasing people's inclination to pirate your music.... Not saying its right or justified but its just the reality of it.
 
Say buh bye to your streaming income - no one cares about Tidal, Sprint or enough to switch.
 
I thought he retired?

I'm pretty sure he's hurting no one but himself by only releasing his new album on Tidal.
 
I can only hope the album exclusively stays there.
Most RAP has to be the most racist hate based industry on the planet second only to terrorist of all kinds.
 
I was suckered into trying Tidal. BIG MISTAKE. They "auto-renewed" me (a bit early at that) and I immediately cancelled and contacted them for a refund. This was within 5 minutes of being charged. They refused. Despite the fact they renewed me early, and was told about "policies" that I was supposed to cancel 24 hours before the auto-renewal (which is not stated anywhere in their terms, which I pointed out to them), they still refused.

I want to dispute with my CC company, but Tidal's terms say that if I do a chargeback and lose, they will charge me for their time spent. Ridiculous.
 
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I hope Apple hurry up and buy Tidal, because there's nowhere near enough Rap represented in Apple Music's PR output. A new album by Mr Z would help re-dress that terrible imbalance, and ensure the continued dominance* of Apple Music.
(*if you don't count Spotify, and the World outside Trumpton).
 
The first thing artists and the labels need to understand is there is no such thing as "exclusives." Content will always be available on torrents in addition to sanctioned channels.

The second thing artists and labels need to understand is if people want it, and it's not easily available on a broad range of legitimate sources, they will steal it using torrents. If I have a Spotify subscription and want Jay-Z's new album which is only on a Tidal, I don't sign-up for Tidal, I just take 30 seconds and download it from a toorent.

To that point, the subscription services need to stop wasting money with these music exclusives which are hostile to customers, and more importantly, simply do not work. It is simply not in consumers' behavior to sign up for a service just to listen to one album or one artists. In the video space, exclusives work because there is a large number of shows on a service, episodic content tends to be more social, and viral, and torrenting video is hard(er).

Finally, artists and labels need to understand when you grant an exclusive to one service, at best it gets stolen. Theft is not the worst case scenario. The reality is the artists new music , and the artist themselves, are invisible, limiting promotional value for concert tours and back catalog sales.

Exclusives don't work for the artist, the labels, or the streaming services. They hurt artists' ability to promote and make money touring. They are hostile to customers. When is the industry going to wake-up?
 
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KALLT said:
Even Mozart wouldn’t be able to persuade me to subscribe to his chosen streaming service.

This exclusivity nonsense needs to stop.
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It really needs to stop and make video streaming stop exclusives at the same time (way worse situation there)
 
This is why I hate exclusives and also why I don't like the idea of Apple getting into video creation. Companies will arbitrarily limit availability to try and "encourage" consumers to sign up for their overpriced services. They will have an extremely limited amount of desirable content yet will charge the same price as a subscription to an all-encompassing service that offers much more choice.

We've been there before in the music industry when they tried to ram CDs exclusively down our throat and cut out the individual single. That didn't work out very well. People are going to get the content by piracy if it isn't offered on what the consumers perceive to be reasonable terms.

EDIT: You need to change the title of the article. Born Shawn Corey Carter, he took the moniker Jay-Z, then Jay Z, and just today (with great fanfare) the artist has announced he will henceforth be known as JAY-Z.
 
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Last time I checked these streaming service exclusives are exclusive to a streaming platform, meaning you can still purchase the music on CD or the iTunes Store.

So I really don't understand all the complaints about exclusives.

Then again I still purchase CD's. Perhaps one day I will start to purchase music from the iTunes Store and maybe some day I'll move to a streaming service.

For now I prefer to purchase and actually own physical media instead of purchasing rights to a license that I can lose at anytime.
 
Sprint and Tidal exclusive? Darn, I don't have those. Oh well, there isn't any other way I'd be able to get this album. Guess I'll have to change cell phone companies.
 
Relentless Power said:
I don't see how Tidal is relevant in the music industry or even competing at this point. I don't have an issue with Jay-Z as an artist, but it seems Tidal is a garbage service seeking ways to survive.
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They do offer high quality audio streaming that's what I like about it
 
Surprised at the hostility towards the world’s ONLY lossless streaming service. Tidal is literally like having the real CDs, with no difference in quality, to listen to. So that claim where streaming services say thousands of CDs available is actually true
 
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