Over the weekend, Jay-Z and Beyonce surprised music fans everywhere when they released a brand new joint-album titled Everything Is Love. Interestingly, the album launched exclusively on Tidal, a curious strategic decision though not at all surprising given that Tidal is owned by Jay-Z.
Not two days later, Everything Is Love is already available on a slew of rival streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and others. With respect to Spotify, the album is currently available exclusively to the site’s premium subscribers, though it will eventually be available on the service’s free tier by the end of the month.
The brief tenure of Everything Is Love as a Tidal exclusive is interesting, if not downright laughable. Was there really anything to be gained via this strategy? Did Jay-Z really think the allure of a new joint album was so great that a 2-day exclusivity period would do anything to boost Tidal’s subscriber numbers?
If anything, the breathtakingly short exclusivity period only serves to diminish the appeal of forthcoming exclusives. Consider this: Jay-Z and Kanye West release a joint album on Tidal later this year. Are people going to flock to Tidal or simply wait it out, knowing that its only a matter of time — if not days — before it launches on sites like Spotify.
On another front, it’s interesting that the album went to Spotify so quickly given that Beyonce throws a few jabs at the music streaming service on one of the Everything Is Love tracks. Specifically, she claims that she doesn’t care about streaming numbers because her success can’t be quantified.
“If I gave two f*** about streaming numbers woulda put Lemonade on Spotify,” Beyonce raps.
All that aside, the album itself is pretty solid and can be enjoyed now on any streaming service you happen to prefer.
