As of Friday April 7, Jay-Z, the co-owner of streaming music site Tidal has essentially pulled his entire music catalog from Spotify, the leader in music streaming. Although Jay-Z’s team has made no official statement, the act itself sent waves throughout the media and music industry. A Spotify spokesperson confirmed the removal saying, “some of his catalog has been removed at the request of the artist.” Jay was probably hoping his aggressive move would help spark subscribers to join Tidal. As reported by Billboard:
“The self-proclaimed more artist-friendly service trails leaders Spotify (50 million subscribers as of last count), Apple Music (20 million as of last official count), and Amazon (never says, but when bundled with Amazon Prime could be well over 10 million). Tidal’s subscription numbers are thought to be under 3 million and perhaps on par with competitors Deezer and Napster.”
Oddly, although many albums had been pulled from Apple Music as well as Spotify, as of Monday April 10, the majority of his albums were back on Apple’s streaming service. Jay-Z’s three Blueprint albums, and his solo debut Reasonable Doubt, for which Jay-Z owns the masters are not on Apple Music or Spotify, but were removed at a previous time. More to come.
