Kanye West’s latest music, as featured on “So Help Me God,” might be a little delayed on Spotify. To make users of this particular music streaming service even sadder, West is joined by other musicians who also committed themselves to Jay Z’s recently launched streaming service, Tidal.
It is not known if upcoming albums from other musicians on Tidal will purposely delay their release at Spotify. Tidal’s long list of high profile artists include Daft Punk, Madonna, Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, and Deadmau5.
Both Bey and Riri already exclusively launched their latest music on Tidal over the weekend as a move to further entice potential subscribers.
According to Breakit, this stunt is called “windowing.” It is oftentimes used in the movie industry for fans who do not have plans of spending their money for a cinema ticket and would rather wait for the flick’s DVD version to come out.
“We want all the world’s music on our service,” said Spotify through a statement. “But, there has been sporadic limiting on Spotify since it was created. We know from experience that these things happen. They come and go. And, we continue to grow exponentially by delivering a great product for our users and the artists they love.”
As part of Jay Z’s attempts to diminish the advantage that Spotify has over Tidal, he officially removed his debut studio album, “Reasonable Doubt,” from the former music streaming service. Hence, the entire album is no longer available for Spotify users. Meanwhile, Tidal has the 1996 album fully ready for purchase. Fans can listen to it all day and all night for a subscription price of $19.99 a month, according to The Urban Daily.
However, he insisted that he has no intentions of “sinking” Spotify. He just wants to “strike an honest blow,” one that could end up being beneficial for both the artists and their fans.
According to Independent, it is highly unlikely that the other artists will also be pulling out their albums on Spotify particularly since they reportedly do not have this liberty. Jay Z owns his own record label, Rocnation, which means that he is free to distribute his songs as he pleases.
It remains to be seen whether the absence of Jay Z’s first album will have any effect on the success that Spotify has gotten since it started to dominate the music streaming service industry.
