Jigga recently announced that he would be releasing his 13th solo studio album (outside three collaborative albums he’s done with R Kelly, and Kanye West) at the end of this month.
The big difference with this particular album is that it will be available exclusively on Tidal, the rapper’s streaming service.
Tidal has also partnered with Sprint, a US cellular carrier that recently bought a 33% stake in the streaming service for $200 million, to offer its users free access to Tidal for six months so that they can also listen to the upcoming album.
The last album Jay-Z released was the highly acclaimed Magna Carta Holy Grail in 2013.
In the recent months, there have been questions around whether exclusive streaming and downloading of music is actually good for an artist and increasing subscriptions, as has been believed for a long time. Connected to this are questions around Jay-Z’s album and its exclusivity on Tidal – is this his way of trying to boost the struggling service, and if yes, will it actually work?
Writing for The Guardian, music business writer Eamonn Forde writes that it would seem that the rapper is putting business before music and questions whether the method will work. It has not yet been confirmed how long the album will remain exlusive to Tidal users.
How many people are really going to be in the middle of their contract term and say: ‘OK, I’m going to cancel this go get Sprint instead’
On 26 March, Tidal reported gaining an impressive 3 million subscribers in less than two years, but a business publication from Norway called Dagens Naeringsliv disputed this, alleging that the number was closer to 1,5 million at the time.
Let’s take a look at Tidal’s exclusive streaming history. When the service first launched with Jay-Z at the helm, some of the world’s biggest stars supported the service and made a pledge to offer their material exclusively to Tidal.
There was Rihanna’s Anti album, which was meant for exclusive streaming on Tidal, but because it was released early by “mistake”, this didn’t work out and 1 million copies of the album had to be handed out for free to disgruntled customers.
Following this, there was Kanye West’s much-anticipated The Life of Pablo album, which the rapper swore would never be seen on any other platform other than Tidal… well, it was just weeks before it was available on Apple Music and Spotify.
While Beyoncé’s most recent visual album Lemonade remains a Tidal exclusive, it has been knocked off so many times across the globe, it might as well have been available on all other platforms.
Speaking to the LA Times, senior entertainment and Internet industry analyst for investment banking firm Needham & Co Laura Martin was sceptical about Jay-Z’s move.
“Sprint and Tidal’s move is a worsening, if you will, of what Apple started, which is paying for music exclusives to try and drive Apple Music subscriptions,” Martin told the publication.
“If they used to listen to Jay-Z on Spotify, all they know is they put in ‘Jay-Z’ and nothing’s there. How many people are really going to be in the middle of their contract term and say: ‘OK, I’m going to cancel this go get Sprint instead’?”
We can’t blame Jigga for wanting to make his business better and re-investing his music into it – but we don’t know how effective his method will be.
“In an age of digital ubiquity, exclusives are an anachronistic bet on a roulette wheel where the only pockets are marked as either ‘invisibility’ or ‘irrelevance’,” writes Forde.
