The fact remains that artists from every major label - Drake (through Cash Money’s distribution deal with UMG), Rihanna and West for Universal Beyonce, Future and DJ Khaled for Sony Blake Shelton and PartyNextDoor for Warner - have succeeded using exclusive or windowed releases. 1 Debut on Billboard 200 Chartīut whether the heads of Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group - Doug Morris and Stephen Cooper, respectively - follow Grainge’s lead in shutting down exclusives is a matter of debate. To that end, UMG insiders critical of exclusives vocally muse that such artists as Ariana Grande and U2 would have seen much more significant debuts.įrank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’ Album Heading for No. And privately, many executives at major labels have agreed with that position, saying that, in addition to fostering piracy, the strategy segments off an artist’s fan base into the smaller pools of Apple Music (15 million subscribers) and Tidal (estimated to have 4 million subscribers) rather than allowing the broader paid on-demand streaming subscriber base (68 million people worldwide, according to the IFPI) to tune in.
FRANK OCEAN ALBUMS MUSIC TRACKS ONLY FREE
Spotify, one of the industry’s favorite punching bags over the past few years due to its free tier and the low royalty payments that it generates, has long eschewed exclusives as bad for artists and bad for fans. (Def Jam and Apple Music did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
But it doesn’t necessarily represent a coup for Apple Music, either, as the ire of the industry - and the biggest label in the world - turns toward the house that Jobs built. That makes Grainge’s umbrage understandable. 1 on the Billboard 200 with Ocean, Def Jam won’t even have that consolation. The Frank Ocean release follows two other highly unorthodox rollouts from Def Jam artists, both via Jay Z‘s Tidal service: Rihanna‘s leaked Anti album and Kanye West‘s extended-streaming/eventual U-turn of a strategy for The Life of Pablo. In addition, most recording contracts stipulate a window of time during which an artist can’t release music on any other label, so as not to compete with the current project - in this case, DefJam’s Endless. By delivering Blond within just 24 hours, it raises the question of whether Universal even knew it was coming - and what they could have done about it regardless.
(Sources close to the situation at both Def Jam and Universal Music say that no legal action against Ocean is currently being considered.)įrank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’ Proves Why Artists Shouldn’t Be Rushedįor one, many record contracts are based on minimum-delivery clauses, meaning that if Ocean’s deal was just for two albums, he typically would have had to deliver them within a set time frame, and at a label-acceptable level of quality, in order to fulfill his contract. Ocean delivered Endless instead, fulfilling his deal and severing his contractual ties to the major.īut to release another full-length, fully-realized album outside the label’s purview just 24-hours later is controversial, to say the least, and a source tells Billboard that while UMG hasn’t taken any legal action against Ocean or his team, the label group may have grounds to do so. Now it appears that Ocean, perhaps through an advance via his new deal with Apple (though one source suggests a separate, private benefactor), paid that amount back to Def Jam, absolving him of any recoupable claims from Def Jam/UMG and essentially buying Ocean his own recordings back. In July, Billboard reported that Def Jam had spent as much as $2 million on recording costs for Ocean’s album, at the time thought to be called Boys Don’t Cry. Now, the question is, how did Ocean win this battle? Did he? And what does it mean for the other labels, streaming services and the industry at large?
UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge reacted swiftly by informing the heads of his labels that Universal was done with streaming exclusives on one platform and on a global basis, which has been at the center of the streaming services’ arms race in the last 18 months, though it remains unconfirmed whether or not Grainge’s policy change was a direct result of Ocean’s strategy behind Blond.
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