{"id":55,"date":"2015-05-13T10:56:40","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T07:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/?p=55"},"modified":"2015-05-13T10:59:06","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T07:59:06","slug":"jay-z-and-the-exclusive-content-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/jay-z-and-the-exclusive-content-myth\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Z and the Exclusive Content Myth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pasted_Image_5_13_15__10_54_AM\"“The tide is high, but I\u2019m holding on<\/em>
\nI\u2019m gonna be your number one\u2026”<\/em>
\n(John Holt)<\/p>\n

The tide was high last week when Jay Z launched his new (=recently acquired) music streaming service Tidal. ICYMI,\u00a0Jay Z – superstar producer, entrepreneur, billionaire, Beyonce\u2019s husband – acquired Swedish music company Aspiro for $56 Million 3 months ago<\/a> with hopes of challenging Spotify and taking the streaming music market by a storm.<\/p>\n

However when the tide went out, \u00a0there seemed to not be much under the Tidal hood but a \u00a320 a month price tag. Yes, there was this noble vision of giving more revenue back to the artists, and the promise of lossless streaming (won\u2019t even get into this one\u2026), but at the end of the day – how does Jay Z plan to justify the pricey subscription fee and beat the competition? \u00a0Exclusive content<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Yep, you heard it right – exclusive content. The same weapon that every Spotify rival has tried before, including\u00a0the exclusive content masterminds of Apple, the clever folks at YouTube\/Google and many others. Has any service won on exclusive content? \u00a0No!<\/p>\n

Has anyone joined Tidal because Beyonce released her new song exclusively there<\/a>? \u00a0I seriously doubt that. \u00a0Has anyone left Spotify for the competition becauseTaylor Swift took her catalog off the service<\/a>? \u00a0A few fans maybe. \u00a0Has anyone bought an iPhone to get U2\u2019s latest album for free<\/a>? \u00a0Pffff. \u00a0\u00a0You see, the harsh truth is that there is no such thing as exclusive content,<\/strong> and that with a practically limitless catalog no one really cares<\/strong> about a little exclusivity here and there.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 2015, folks. Every song, by any artist, is available to stream and\/or download online within seconds for the average Google-using Joe. Artists have pretty much given up the fight against piracy, and are actively trying to use it for their own benefit (promote their music, grow their fan base, etc.). You can\u2019t really keep anything exclusive once it goes online, and – as Madonna recently learned<\/a> – many times even before that.<\/p>\n

And if something is exclusive, do we really care? \u00a03 years ago Andy Baid compared two of my favorite streaming services, Spotify and Rdio, by their content<\/a>. He found out, for instance, that Rdio had 12 Bob Dylan albums streaming exclusively (at least back then), while Spotify had 3 from Underworld and 3 from Katatonia. Would that make anyone leave their favorite music service, forget their listening habits, let go of their valuable playlists, playing history, friends? \u00a0\u00a0Maybe some die hard Dylan fan would, but not the majority of users. In fact, I argue that as most people stream only\u00a0the most popular songs<\/a> anyway, the majority of subscribers won\u2019t even notice that this or that album is missing.<\/p>\n

Hence the need for PR. \u201cBeyonce is streaming exclusively\u201d is a perfect title for a marketing campaign, but other than the entertainment press, no one cares. Because everyone is streaming it already on YouTube, and because it\u2019s simply not enough for me to leave my trusted music service, with its mobile app that I love, and social graph I have built. You want to take your content off my music service? \u00a0Well, go ahead. I\u2019ll just look for it elsewhere (if I will look for it at all).<\/p>\n

Newsflash: If you\u2019re a music artist in 2015, you need to be everywhere. On every service. In every device. Madonna, who can teach marketing classes to many of the young and inspiring music stars of this day, just released her new music video,Ghosttown<\/a>, on live video sensation Meerkat as well as old school VEVO, on Jimmy Fallon and on Tidal, and of course on YouTube. Wherever you are, whatever you\u2019re using to listen to music, Madonna will play it for you. Because Madonna knows\u00a0exclusive content is a myth<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s time to say it out loud, even if it puts us users in a kind of a shady light. Spotify and Netflix have proven that many of us will pay a reasonable monthly subscription fee to get all the content we want. But they\u2019ve also proven that most of us will consume the content we want, even if it is missing on these \u201clegit\u201d services, in any way possible, each according to his own skills, and we won\u2019t hold for anyone. Not even for Beyonce.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrink in your summer, gather your corn
\n<\/em>The dreams of the night time will vanish by dawn
\n<\/em>And time waits for no one\u2026\u201d
\n<\/em>(Mick Jagger)<\/p>\n


\n<\/strong>Headline photo\u00a0by\u00a0Photosteve101.
\n<\/a>Thanks to my good friend Yael Beeri<\/a> for going over this post and making sense out of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The tide is high, but I\u2019m holding on I\u2019m gonna be your number one\u2026” (John Holt) The tide was high last week when Jay Z launched his new (=recently acquired) music streaming service Tidal. ICYMI,\u00a0Jay Z – superstar producer, entrepreneur, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,4,22,3],"tags":[28,25,24,27,7,26],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing","category-music","category-music-industry","category-startups","tag-exclusive-content","tag-jay-z","tag-marketing","tag-music-streaming","tag-startups-2","tag-tidal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Pasted_Image_5_13_15__10_54_AM.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/60"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sagee.bz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}