One of the “issues” with streaming services is that, at any given moment, what you have in your library of songs may just not be there one day.
That’s because, depending on rights, artists, and labels, that music can be pulled, and therefore no longer accessible to the subscriber base. That seems to be partly the situation recently with any fans of Jay-Z recently noticing that the artist has pulled some of his music catalog from both Apple Music and Spotify. Specifically, at the time of publication, only pieces of music where Jay-Z is a collaborator or featured artist are still present on Spotify and Apple Music.
As noted by MacRumors, there could be a variety of reasons why this has happened. It could simply be a mistake, or it could be a bigger push on Jay-Z’s part to lock away the majority of his content behind the Tidal paywall, where he is the owner of the streaming music service.
Interestingly enough, it could also have something to do with the recent stake that Sprint made in Tidal, equaling up to 33%. That move made it so Sprint could offer up a free subscription to the surface to its subscribers, as well as other perks, but it also surfaced questions about the longevity of the service in general, or what other changes might be put in place.
Exclusive content is a big deal in the streaming music business, especially for the likes of Apple Music and Tidal. While some tables have raised concerns over the practice of exclusive launches or exclusive availability windows, it seems to be a practice that won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Jay-Z making it so that the majority of his catalog is only available through his own streaming service is certainly hard to ignore.
