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 majorto 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.