Apple Music continues to secure artist exclusives…
A report by Interscope Records has confirmed that Apple Music has secured another artist exclusive – this time with Chicago rapper, Dreezy. The album titled ‘No Hard Feelings’ will be available on the streaming platform as of July 15th. Apple Music will have a one-week exclusive before the album becomes more widely available across other streaming services. ‘No Hard Feelings’ will feature 19 tracks, including the song ‘Body’ ft. Jeremiah – which has already managed to rack up over 18 million YouTube views, ‘Close To You’ ft. T-Pain, and ‘We Gon Ride’ ft. Gucci Mane.
The practice of windowing an album for one week on a particular streaming service is becoming more and more popular, as artists look for new ways to monetize their music. Artists generally opt for Apple Music, as the service offers them a platform that pays a generous per-stream royalty rate. Well, when you compare it to other streaming services, that is. Another factor, is that the service only has a paid option unlike Spotify, where music fans can access the complete catalog for free in its ad-supported version.
Drake’s latest album, ‘Views’ was exclusively released on the platform for one week before being released on other streaming services. The rapper’s global hit ‘Hotline Bling’ was also first streamed on Apple Music before becoming more widely available across other streaming platforms. DVSN — an up-and-coming band signed to Drake’s label — was exclusively streamed on the service, and Chance The Rapper released his ‘Coloring Book’ mixtape exclusively on the streaming platform, which became the first album to hit the Billboard 200 chart despite only being available on streaming services.
Apple Music have been opting to secure music exclusives as a way to grow their subscriber base at a faster rate than its competitors – and it has been working so far. Two weeks ago the service announced hitting 15 million subscribers one year after launch – that’s an average of more than one million users signing up to the service every month.
The streaming exclusive strategy is obviously working for Apple, and has now got Spotify thinking about doing the same. In fact, it is thought that Spotify hired Troy Carter at the beginning of this month, to solely work on creating and maintaining relationships with songwriters, artists and labels in order to boost Spotify’s exclusive content on the service.
The post Sorry Spotify, Apple Music Scores Another Music Exclusive appeared first on Digital Music News.