Forget the Olympics! The race between streaming platforms to best the competition has been most compelling.
Indeed, with streaming rapidly becoming the primary means of music consumption, platforms such as Apple Music, Spotify, and TIDAL routinely churn out exclusives to one-up each other.
This year alone has seen major examples manifest in the form album launches by Beyonce, Drake, and Rihanna. All of which had an “exclusive” streaming component.
The landscape may be set for its most drastic change yet, though, if a new report proves true.
Full story below…
According to The Guardian, an internal industry newsletter claims Universal Music Group will be first major label to ban practice of artists offering exclusives to services such as Tidal and Apple.
The reports adds that Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group and widely regarded as the most powerful executive in the music industry, has reportedly ordered the company’s labels to stop the practice of making “exclusive” distribution deals with streaming services.
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Interesting, as many of the acts releasing such “exclusives” belong to labels under the Universal umbrella. Artists like Kanye West, Rihanna, Drake, and Frank Ocean.
What folk tend to forget is that labels are businesses. Hence, it benefits them to have their product across as many platforms as possible to maximize revenue.
From where we’re standing, this appears like an industry play to reclaim some of the power back from streaming services.
This way, it’ll force the Apple Music’s and co to find other ways to engage their growing audiences and ultimately make music consumption less restrictive to the platform of one’s choice.
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oops, imagine they did this before thePinkshït was made triple platinum from streems
You’re an idiot because the pink print wasn’t certified due to streaming exclusively. It was certified because the RIAA is in charge of certifications NOT UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP you f****** idiot. Did you even read the post?
LMAO DRAG IT!!!
r***** like that just p*** me off,he so in love with hating on nicki, he doesn’t care how stupid that comment made him look.
What kind of sloppy ass attempt to drag??? The Pinkprint was never exclusive to any platform so what on earth would this ban have done??? READ before you type, i thought asians were supposed to be smart
Thank you drake would’ve been the one salty
Why on earth do you have Rihanna photo up there? Rihanna didn’t have a streaming exclusive. How project was available on all platforms. if anything you need to have Kanye, Frank, Beyoncé or Drake photo up there. Yall always shading Rihanna.
Anti was a tidal exclusive are you slow
Anti was a tidal exclusive for a couple days. Unlike someone else’s ! After that it was available on almost every outlet! Regardless of if streaming is the saving grace or not! It was leaked and pirated. It was strategically planned however don’t sit here and try to act like bey and Kanye didn’t solely block off their albums to tidal. Which is why Anti has surpassed a billion streams. The demand was real on ALL OUTLETS! Spotify, Amazon, tidal, google play, and the rest. Lord knows of Beyoncé allowed that album to be streamed on any other outlet from the jump ; them sales would have been struggling
Lol 4 was leaked and pirated for a FULL MONTH! Lemonade would still be selling if it was on all streaming platform’s. She has an established fan base and this far into her career all her albums have sold above 3 million.
Boy bye! Compare AUNTIE’S pure sales to Lemonades, then get back to us. If you take away samsung and STREAMING how much has that album really sold ?
Don’t act like streaming isn’t one of the saving graces for “Anti’s” lack of pure sales.
FRANK OCEAN is no longer on DefJam. He released BLONDE independently.
Well that sucks for artist who can’t sale millions of albums in PURE SALES without the help of Samsung & purchased plaques.
She had no problem doing it with the 6 albums before lol. If she wouldn’t have given out over a million copies for free, it would have sold like the rest before.
Wow!
How was school?
Great! Seeing as I get to choose my own hour’s. Saw a homeless trans man going behind the Adult Video store with a customer on the ride home and immediately thought of you. Stay safe and use protection. ???
Cute sis but I wasn’t shading.. Glad your focused on school wouldn’t want you to be a dropout like your fav.
Oh, its quite exhausting keeping up with your split personalities. Should double up on the meds. ?
Well…imagine if this ban was done before CANTI….460???
I don’t think rihanna is under universal? I thought she was signed somewhere else?
She has universal ties as state above! She is lucky that didn’t happen before “Anti” dropped because she would be STRUGGLING!
Lol OK I was just asking calm your ass down.
Well this should be interesting
I don’t understand why y’all are bringing up streaming. From the looks of this Pink Print would still be triple platinum and Anti would still be a streaming force. They’re talking about keeping music exclusively from being available on only ONE STREAMING PLATFORM.
Hail I f**** with you heavy. You’re the only person to say anything smart yet. Lol I honestly don’t think they read the damn article.
No Sis they’re encouraging their labels to stop making exclusive distribution deals with streaming services
Yes you are right; however, its a problem, because streaming exclusives are the easiest way to garner cold hard cash that is needed to cover the costs from production to studio time instead of waiting on the money from album sales to come back from the distribution company, Universal Music. And for the ones apart of Tidal, the money goes even further in their pockets as they are artist-owners. This just another move by the corporate giants to gain more control back as the Tidal artist-owners tried to gain some.
Universal? Oh ok lol Kii..
So what’s gonna happen? Jay nicki bey ye rih all own tidal. So how can they ban them from doing something that they own? I don’t I’m confused.
Universal Music own the distribution which is something NONE of those artist involved with Tidal have. By controlling the distribution you control the music and the money its garnered.
@truth damn. Well we’ll see how it go I guess. I just honestly don’t understand the decision of the labels are still getting certified music from the services. I don’t know I think I’m missing something I’m honestly confused. Streaming really has people pissed.
Labels make 10x more money with selling cold hard albums instead of streaming. The energy of the music market will go towards a streaming outlet (which is the purpose of the streaming exclusives) instead of the potential of some of those people buying entire albums. Furthermore, it forces the artist to wait to receive money from the distribution whereas exclusives give the artist cash (usually much less than what can be garnered from selling albums) as its for sure money. Think of it like a pawn shop; you’re selling something at a lesser value for an immediate return. From there, artist could pay back the cost of making their album and instantly have some extra cash for the supporting tour.
Bey is under Sony/Columbia idk what that means for the rest
This about to get good.
This is an interesting play. Although streaming is the new way the masses gather music, there are artists who are still selling albums well. You now have even some indie artist moving over 70k first week which is commendable. I believe that artists making crappy albums is the primary blame for the decline in music sales as consumers weren’t pleased with the entire product. Furthermore, there has been a shift in artists truly curating a collection rather than club hit bangers. From J.Cole, Adele to Chris Stapleton, these artists sold albums that continued selling throughout the year. On the business side, those people are business monsters and will stop at nothing to continue getting rich.
Exclusives only work if you are a huge selling-force with an established stanbase. The same goes for surprise releases. I guess the main fear is that it will become such a trend that most artists will start doing it regardless of their popularity, and it will affect the overall sales. Definitely makes sense why they want to nip it in the bud.
Yall not gon like what I got to say but there is so much supremacy associated with this. Remember when they were trashing tidal? I honestly feel like it’s because it’s owned predominantly by Jay z and other urban acts. Tidal is huge for the culture but not the business yet they turned right around and invented apple music and YouTube Red doing the same thing tidal was doing which is mad funny to me. Now they’re banning it altogether? Lol I guess.
industry blah. uninteresting.
I don’t get why post Rih her album is on all streaming services
Because Rihanna’s label is UNDER Universal, ya dumb ass. Same thing applies to Kanye and Frank Ocean. Did you not read the article ?
Just another way to stop artists getting pay checks… no private streaming deal, more money for the label!
Streaming should be banned from charts period. It’s just something certain people have to cling to when their fave can’t sell pure sales. #FlopsWayOut
Good thing Bey is signed with Colombia/Sony *sips lemonade*
@Rihboy You say streaming is the saving grace that’s only in the charts boo. Most of Rihanna’s streams comes from Spotify. Now Anti have been streams about 1.1 billion times. Actually 1,166,000,000 x 0.0084 that’s 9.7million in seven months. Now I’m not even a Rihanna fan but Anti would’ve debuted with 300k or more without the exclusive. 300k x 13.99 that’s 4.1 million dollars in just one week. Streaming is just pretty on the charts it takes a long time to gain a lot of money from it. And dont start the “streaming is the future thing” I get it I’m just saying
What makes you think she wouldve debuted with over 300k when she’s never done it before though…
I think the 3 year break from music would’ve helped tbh
She was still releasing music in this so called ‘break from music’
@Lydia Oh come on, have a little faith. You know what they say. Eighth time’s the charm… ?
This is just the labels trying to take back control cause at the end if the day the streaming sites are making the most money.
Well im going to say THANK YOU. This seems to be the beginning of something great to the music entertainment industry. Taking back the music. Taking it way back and making actual cd’s the predominant force, bringing the excitement of standing in line for hours waiting on your favorite Artist actual cd to be released. I’ve always thought the streaming services outside of Apple & Tidal were extra. Now that they soon will be unemployed, they’ll all find job placements at the record companies in the Music Distribution department of how to market cd placement for stores YAYYYYYYYYY lol.
I’m not surprised, labels are becoming obsolete soon. Artists do not need Labels to distribute or market their music anymore when you have social media and streaming services doing that for you. Less money for the artist to spend on developing their eras and less money going into the pockets of record labels. I’ll be shocked if the other labels do not follow suit or find alternative means to restrict streaming sales.
All I know is this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmrhW5S0dR8
Saw a homeless trans man going behind the Adult Video store with a customer on the ride home and immediately thought of you. Stay safe and use protection.
____
EYE AM CRINE!!!!!!!!! I can-NOT!!!!!!
??????
Typical Universal. No wonder all the major artists went or are currently signed to Sony. I am pleased that Sony Music doesn’t care about streaming exclusives because all their artists can sell albums consistently with streaming included. The biggest name’s are with Sony. Britney Spears, Pharell, Adele, Beyonce, Calvin Harris, Fifth Harmony, Megan Trainer, Barbara Streishand, Celine Dion,Mariah Carey, and many many more.
I say ban it. I have Spotify and As a fan of certain artists, I don’t like when albums are exclusive to another platform. It’s annoying. Don’t force the fans to sign up and pay for other platforms. Find another way to increase your subscribers.
Universal is only going to hurt themselves. By banning exclusives. Exclusives are actually helping artist sale huge numbers.
Uni is one of the big three labels. I don’t care, Rihanna is a free artist and can do what she wants. And is the main artist winning off of steams bc she put her album on ALL of them.
Wow