It’s rumored to be a deal with iTunes, but regardless of who it is, we know it will be an exclusive. It is expected that Garth Brooks will be announcing his own exclusive download/streaming deal when he convenes a press conference on Thursday, September 8th. It was torrented roughly 500,000 times just in the first 24 hours after its exclusive release. In other words, way more units were moved illegally.Ī similar story goes for Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, which was released exclusively to Tidal, of which West is a partner of. Meanwhile according to Billboard, Blonde sold roughly 276,000 album-equivalent units, including 232,000 in traditional album sales in its first week. At this point, the illegal downloads are likely over 1 million. And after only a week, the album had been illegally downloaded 753,849 times according to Music Business Worldwide. R&B artist Frank Ocean grabbed the music world’s attention when he surprisingly released his new record Blonde on August 20th, making the album available only through iTunes and Apple music. The hip thing in 2016 for many big-named artists is to only make their music available on one specific streaming or download service, usually in a deal struck between the artist’s label or management and the streaming service in hopes of drawing more subscribers towards one service, or in many cases, away from another-specifically Spotify who happens to be the biggest dog in the race, and the one all of the other streaming services are trying to lure subscribers from.īut it’s highly questionable if exclusives or windowing actually benefits anyone beyond the streaming service that the exclusive deal is struck with. How did we revert back to 2003 in the music piracy game?
Then came along streaming from companies like Spotify, and piracy was virtually eradicated, at least in the United States, since anyone could stream virtually any song either free, or for a nominal monthly fee to remove the commercials.īut now illegal downloads are beginning to make a comeback all of a sudden.
As soon as downloads became quick and easy, the piracy slowed. Later as the new paradigm of digital music shook out, it became apparent that part of the stimulus behind piracy was the music industry’s slow adoption of the digital model. Hardcore audiophiles justified their trespasses by saying only a fraction of the proceeds went to their favorite artist anyway, and most of the money instead ended up in the pockets of fat cat labels who didn’t give a flip about the music. Remember when piracy was the big issue facing music? You had thousands, millions of records and songs being illegally downloaded by cheapskates who didn’t want to pay a measly $9.99 for a CD from their favorite artists.