Music streaming exclusives to come to an end?
News: 25th August 2016 by Louise Dodgson under Record Labels, Selling & Distributing Your Music
Since the release of Frank Ocean's album(s) last week, music streaming exclusives have been turned on their head! The first of Ocean's albums (a video stream named Endless made available exclusively through Apple Music) was released through Universal to fulfil an album deal, but was shortly eclipsed by a second release (which most deem the 'actual' album, Blonde, a 17 track release) which Ocean put out on his own new label.
As you can imagine Universal are not best pleased that they have stirred up a lot of excitement through extensive press and marketing for a release which Ocean has then surfed the back of a mere week later with a new release, and by self-releasing Blonde he will be the one to mop up all the royalties. Some reports claim that Universal may be moving to sue Ocean as a result of this.
The knock on effect of this has been for the head of Universal Music Group, Lucien Grange, to tell staff that offering new albums exclusively to a streaming services can no longer happen. For a major label of this size, which has many subsidiary labels under its wing, to take this stance it's not unfeasible to see this restriction setting a precedent across the whole music industry.
Read more about why this decision could be a positive thing for the music industry via the articles below...
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Universal Music Group to stop exclusive music streaming following Frank Ocean album release
