Did the Jay-Z’s new album release as a TIDAL and Sprint exclusive lead to more piracy? Even Snoop Dog admitted said that he had to “bootleg” the album to hear it. Well, we’ve got an answer – nearly 1 million illegal “4.44” downloads in the just first 72 hours – but exactly what that means about exclusives and piracy depends on how you read the data.
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Jay-Z’s new album 4.44 was downloaded illegally 971,196 times in the first 72 hours after its release, according to media piracy analytics specialist MUSO. Of that nearly 1 million pirated copies, 56% downloads were in the US, 5% in the UK and the rest spread out globally.
That’s a big number that proves exclusives lead to piracy; or does it?
MUSO reported 1.32 million illegal downloads of Drake’s new “More Life ” in the first 72 hours in March of this year; and that album was available everywhere.
One obvious conclusion is that Drake is more popular than Jay-Z and another is the piracy is still a problem.
In an industry where A/B (or in this case Jay-Z/Drake) testing is a very inexact science, most other inferences from the data are speculative. Andy Chatterley, CEO and Co-Founder of MUSO says that Drake’s bigger numbers seem to “suggest that piracy is not as dependent on exclusive windowing as we may believe,” and his stats appear to bear that out.
MORE: Snoop Dogg Admits To Pirating Jay-Z’s 4:44 Because He Doesn’t Subscribe To TIDAL