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Beyonce releases another surprise album

By | Published on Monday 25 April 2016

Beyonce

Beyonce has gone and Beyonced another album on us. Like her 2013 ‘Beyonce’ album, ‘Lemonade’ is described as an audio/visual record, with videos to accompany each track. These were premiered on HBO in the US on Saturday evening, after which it was announced that the album was available to stream on Tidal, but only Tidal. It was also briefly made available for sale as a download yesterday.

The exclusivity deal is, of course, not a surprise, given that Tidal is owned by Beyonce’s husband Jay-Z, and the streaming service has been particularly keen to differentiate itself with its album exclusives. Such deals with Rihanna and Kanye West have drawn much attention, of course. Though it’s often not clear how long any Tidal exclusivity period will run for.

As for ‘Lemonade’, a Tidal rep has told Billboard that it will be the only streaming service to ever carry the album, though that presumably relies on the platform’s long term survival and/or Jay-Z’s desire to remain its owner. That wording also suggests more widely available download and physical releases of the new record.

Still, this is another boost for Tidal, which while still a relatively small player in streaming, has quickly grown its subscriber base of late, thanks to its increasingly high profile exclusives. Last week it also benefitted from being the only legal service to carry the Prince catalogue.

Though the handling of its exclusivity deals also came under scrutiny last week, when Tidal and Kanye West were sued over claims by the rapper that his latest album, ‘The Life Of Pablo’, would only ever be available on Jay-Z’s streaming service. It subsequently streamed elsewhere. The perhaps slightly optimistic class action accuses the plaintiffs of misleading West’s fans into signing up for the service in order to farm their personal data.



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