Tag: exclusives

Lead: The album exclusive is pretty much dead. But in its place has come the growing demand from DSPs for bespoke and unique content. They all want to be serviced with something their rivals don’t have – but this is a...

The release of Jay-Z’s new album ‘4.44’ as a Tidal/Sprint exclusive has created plenty of debate and controversy. Just ask Mark Ronson, who was tweeting grumpily about trying (and failing) to hear the album after...

Amazon may reportedly be pumping $4.5bn into video content this year, including a hefty chunk of that into its own original TV shows and films. But don’t expect a similar strategy to come in to play for the company’s...

In 2017, the dust is starting to settle on the question of how ‘exclusives’ will work on music-streaming services. We appear to be moving into an era where by and large, albums will be available on all the services,...

Chance the Rapper’s ‘Coloring Book’ was a big independent success story of 2016, albeit one backed by an exclusive deal with one of the biggest companies in the world: Apple. On Friday, Chance responded to questions...

Sorry, no new Apple Music stats to report from Eddy Cue’s appearance at the Code Media conference overnight: the official figure remains 20 million subscribers, although Cue did make it clear that Apple Music’s growth...

Why didn’t Kanye West appear on ‘Pop Style’, a track on Drake’s recent album ‘Views’? West has blamed Apple and Tidal for his disappearance from a track that he originally contributed a verse to. “I wasn't...

Independent distributor FUGA has opened a US office and signed up hip-hop label Tommy Boy Entertainment as its first big-name client. The company, headquartered in Amsterdam, also has staff in Paris, London and Singapore. This...

We talk a lot in the music industry about which albums are exclusive to or missing from individual streaming services. Over in video-streaming land, though, the catalogue holes are much wider. The latest data comes from...

You can rely on a senior lawyer to pour oil on troubled waters: Universal Music’s general counsel Jeffrey Harleston has been addressing the question of streaming exclusives, in an interview with Billboard. “I don’t...

Lucian Grainge’s recent internal memo announcing that Universal Music no longer wants to take part in streaming exclusives has been seen in some quarters as an ultimatum. Fun context for a quote in Rolling Stone’s article...

A year ago, the Music Managers' Forum (MMF) published its initial Dissecting the Digital Dollar report, exploring the impact that digital music in general – and streaming in particular – is having on the musician and...