Streaming Services’ Impact on Black Music: 2016 and Beyond

The introduction of streaming services in 2011 through Spotify introduced a new paradigm for music consumption. A paradigm that provides access to millions of tracks from the touch of your smartphone, laptop or tablet.

In the five years since its formal introduction to the US market, streaming services have been created by tech giants such as Apple and Google through Apple Music (formally Beats Music) and Google Play Music respectively. These giants don’t only compete to dethrone Spotify but also contend against services such as Jay-Z’s artist-first platform, Tidal, which has presented another wrinkle in this paradigm.

Tidal, along with its stable of high-profile artist owners, has maximized the idea of service exclusive content, shifting the way music is released. Within Tidal’s year of business, it seems as if only one form of music is really feeling the influence of exclusivity.

That form is the most relevant form of popular music: Black music.

To understand how service exclusive content has impacted black music, you’d only have to study what has been happening in music in the first 4 months of 2016.

Six marquee hip hop/R&B artists in particular, have released highly-anticipated and heralded albums in the last 149 days. From the polarizing hip hop legend Kanye West to pop’s princess Rihanna, the past five months have been some of black music’s most interesting months in a while because of their albums.

The two aforementioned artists are also part-owners of Tidal, leading to Tidal-only album releases. This facet of the music industry has increased buzz yet also increased pirating and slander towards artists. Here are some short breakdowns to black music’s six biggest releases:

Bryson Tiller — Trapsoul, released October 2, 2015

Yes, this album was not released in 2016 but it’s insight as to what the future of music looks like is astronomical, and the album also reached it’s maximal sales potential in 2016. Having recently been certified platinum by the RIAA, Trapsoul only sold 22,000 copies in its initial release, ranking 11th on the Billboard 200 for the week. Over time and the increased popularity of the lead single Don’t, Tiller’s impact was felt as streams ramped up on a weekly basis, leading to album sale spikes. Recently, the question of whether or not stream should count as album sales has been posed but as the music industry deals with the impact of streaming, we have began counting streams as ‘equivalent-album’ units, leading to SoundCloud artists like Bryson Tiller attaining platinum status. Tiller didn’t receive any exclusive treatment, allowing users of all platforms access to his trap and R&B vibe. Unlike his contemporaries on this list, this project was Tiller’s debut, also limiting extreme hype and expectations.

Rihanna — Anti, released January 27, 2016

RiRi’s eighth studio album took over three years to see the light of day but once it finally reached it’s rollout, it was revealed to be a Tidal-only release, alienating a large part of her consumer base. As a part of a campaign for Samsung, the South Korean brand bought one million copies, similar to what they did for Jay-Z’s Magna Carta album in 2013. To access the album, fans required a code from Rihanna’s social channels (supplied by Samsung) to download the album for free. Once the Samsung free codes were up, the album was hosted on Tidal for a week, leading to a spike in Tidal downloads *it’s a trend you’ll notice*. Though the album theoretically sold 1.4 million copies first week, it debuted at number 27 on the Billboard 200 chart because Billboard didn’t recognize Samsung’s purchases as actual sales. According to Billboard, Anti only sold 460 actual albums during its first week. Once the free period was lifted, Rihanna claimed the top spot on the chart selling 166,000 albums.

Kanye West — The Life of Pablo, released February 13, 2016

Kanye’s eclectic seventh solo album had been in the works since his polarizing 2013 release, Yeezus. Presented alongside his Yeezy Season 3 fashion line, Kanye and his constituents introduced an altered version of the final album at Madison Square Garden, simultaneously with the fashion presentation. The grandiose occasion was streamed live for free on Tidal before the full album was released to the streaming service 48 hours later. Once live, fans detested the exclusivity so much that there were a reported 500,000 pirated copies of Ye’s album, according to the BBC. Later on, a series of tweets from the rapper led some to believe the album would only be available through Tidal but after one month, the album was released to all major streaming services. After some turbulent weeks that also included Kanye editing songs off the album post-release, TLOP debuted atop the Billboard 200 charts with 94,000 albums sold — 50% from streaming, the first time this had ever happened. It was also reported that the album was streamed 250 million times during the first ten days of availability.

Kendrick Lamar — untitled unmastered, released March 4, 2016

Considered the leftovers of Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy Award-winning masterpiece To Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick’s and his label TDE (Top Dawg Entertainment) released this 8-track project after a series of performances of unheard tracks, all entitled Untitled, garnered praise from the Twittersphere to NBA superstar LeBron James. Unlike his peers on this piece, Kendrick released this with no buzz and no exclusivity, allowing users of all platforms to attain the project upon it’s random release. Though Kendrick’s project is the least prominenet in terms of sales amongst this group, this rollout created havoc on social media, granting the Compton native free marketing for an album of throwaways. This strategy led to over 150,000 albums sold in five days and no backlash from consumers.

Beyoncé — LEMONADE, released April 23, 2016

Queen B’s newest work made the world stop once again after the visual album was presented on HBO during their free weekend trial. Initially announced a week earlier with little detail as to what it was, LEMONADE turned out to be a full-length visual album that was exclusively released to Tidal after the HBO showing. This album, already considered to be Yoncé most poignant work, spiked Tidal downloads overnight and brought much-needed attention to the services’ offerings. After about 24 hours however, the album was released to Apple Music, creating a two platform exclusivity. Users of Spotify and Google Play Music have had to begin memberships with the rights holders to consume the content as no expansion of rights is imminent. LEMONADE’s exclusivity didn’t hurt her sales as the album sold 485,000 copies (653,000 equivalent-album units, meaning streams) as an unexpected release.

Drake — VIEWS, released April 28, 2016

Years of hype led to Thursday night’s debut of VIEWS via Apple’s Beats 1 Radio, namely the OVO SOUND Radio Station, owned by Drake and his OVO label. This was considered a pivotal hip hop moment for millenials as years of hype manifested to teenagers tuning into a radio station to hear the album *felt like what I’d imagine 1996 felt like*. Once debuted upon the radio station, the album was exclusively released on Apple Music. This hasn’t negatively impacted his sales as Drake is reportedly on his way to going platinum within the first week as projections are estimating 1.2 million units including streams. This tactical approach to his release was executed with little mistake as Apple Music has benefitted from Drake’s loyalty, reportedly even taking Kanye and Jay-Z off of the single Pop Style to keep the Apple Music family close.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

The tumultuous and inconsistent release structure has dratiscally evolved from the consistent Tuesday releases of CDs we once had a decade ago. The internet presented a new challenge to artists and their record labels, heightening the attention to detail necessary to maximize an album rollout.

We’ve seen exclusivity prove to be successful for artists such as Drake and Beyonce yet somewhat detrimental to artists like Kanye West and Rihanna. Bryson Tiller and Kendrick Lamar’s more democratic method of release also proved to be successful.

But once studying the facts, the question has to be posed. Why are we only seeing this release model with black music?

Many of popular music’s biggest releases are from outside of black music such as Adele’s 25 and Coldplay’s A Head Full Of Dreams. Neither of these works were released exclusively yet attained a high sales and perfect leeways to world tours.

Is is because their demographic cares to support their favorite musicians? Is it because hip hop fans don’t buy music? Are albums dead in black music?

Many questions can be posed but exclusivity, if handled improperly, can hurt an artist more than it can help. Improper execution of presentation can lead to pirating spikes and shaky allegiances to streaming services through trials and other ways around paying $9.99.

Fans and artists are both in a confusing place in which questions must be answered.

What fans need to figure out is how they want to consume music. Will we allow artists to tell us where to get content or will we fight back and force consistency. Are we prepared to stop listening to our favorite artists for the sake of balance within our rotation of streaming services?

What artists need to figure out is what their purpose for creating music is. Are they here to provide content that reaches any and everyone interested or are they prepared to break consumers into cult-like service loyalty, unless they’re prepared to pay over 30 dollars a month for three to four different services.

At the end of the day, making money is necessary to maximize art and the lifestyles of curators but we also must reach a point in which musicians and their fans have a clear place to attain content or else many more mistakes will be made when smaller artists explore the idea of exclusivity.