Kanye West is taking another shot at exclusivity. He announced Thursday on his white-hot Instagram account that his album Donda 2 won’t be available on Apple, Amazon, Spotify, or YouTube. You can only get it “on my own platform, the stem player.”
“Today artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes,” he said. “It’s time to free music from this oppressive system. It’s time to take control and build our own. Go to stemplayer.com now to order.”
The Stem Player is $200, and created in partnership with Kano Computing. It “ships with Donda,” and the 8GB gadget is an easy way to make remixes, and manipulate individual instrument groups—a.k.a. stems—like drums, bass, or vocals. (In another post, he shared the album’s tracklist.)
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“After 10 albums after being under 10 contracts. I turned down a hundred million dollar Apple deal. No one can pay me to be disrespected,” he wrote. West is one of many top-tier artists who have tried to wrest their music from more powerful music streaming services, which have come under fire for not paying musicians enough, especially those with less sway than the Wests of the world.
“Tech companies made music practically free so if you don’t do merch sneakers and tours you don’t eat,” he wrote. “JAY-Z made Tidal and fake media attacked him.”
“Well in the words of my big brother. Come and get me,” he continued. “I’m willing to die standing cause I ain’t living on my knees no more. God please cover me. I run this company 100% I don’t have to ask for permission.”
He’s posted his net sales in 24 hours:
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“We sold 6,217 units sense 2200-HOURS 2 17 22 which grossed $1,358,597.69 Thats faster than I’ve ever sold any T shirt,” he wrote.
This is not his first attempt at exclusivity. He released The Life of Pablo exclusively on Tidal, and tweeted at the time that it “will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale.” (It was eventually released on Apple as well as other streaming sites, which led to a lawsuit from a fan who claimed to sign up for Tidal based on Ye’s statement. They ultimately settled.) He reportedly left Tidal over a money dispute in 2017.
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