He had chosen a symbolic date, the sequence of palindrome numbers 22.02.2022, for the release of his new album. 2. But you won’t find this record on streaming platforms this Tuesday. Neither on Apple, nor on Amazon, nor on Spotify or YouTube, he warned. Because Kanye West (who should now be called Ye) has decided to make it a symbol of the fight against the poor remuneration of artists by the streaming giants.
To listen 2, his eleventh solo album, fans will therefore have to pay a little more than 200 dollars (177 euros) to obtain a small connected device called Stem Player on which the album is available exclusively since Tuesday (although count 3 weeks for a delivery in France). The price for “be part of the revolution” according to him.
“Artists today only get 12% of the money the (music) industry makes. It’s time to free music from this oppressive system. It’s time to take control and build our own system“, wrote last week on Instagram the American rapper, producer, designer and businessman who is currently the subject of a three-part documentary on Netfix.Songwriters have been really harmed by streaming platforms. Some say I’m the only one who can change things. So as a music innovation leader of the past 20 years, I put my work on the line for change.“
“Tech companies have made music pretty much free, so if you don’t sell sneakers and tours, you don’t eat“, he added, assuring to have”turned down a hundred million dollar offer from Apple” for the exclusivity of his album, visibly annoyed at not having been received in person by Tim Cook, the boss of the apple firm. “No one can pay me for disrespecting me. We set our own price for our art“.
Kanye West touts the Stem Player as a tool to lead the revolution but also as a device for remixing any track, not just those on his album. Small, round and flat in shape, adorned with light diodes, this player makes it possible to isolate the different tracks (vocals, bass, percussion, etc.), then to rework them, whether to speed them up or to slow down, add effects, or create loops within the songs themselves. Small concern: the Stem Player is not available everywhere in the world. It is currently only available in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
This is reminiscent of the unfortunate episode of the high resolution Pono player launched by Neil Young a few years ago. While the Canadian rocker was exasperated by the poor sound quality of MP3s, his walkman, coupled with a paid music download site, promised to offer audiophiles high definition sound, “the best in the world“. But the success of the device, sold for 399 dollars (approximately 352 euros) had only been estimated: launched in 2015, the Pono had ceased to be manufactured in April 2017.
As if to ward off fate, Ye published on Saturday, February 19, the first figures: he claimed to have sold 6,217 Stem Players in 24 hours. A leap forward for this device marketed since August 25, 2021 and which almost no one had heard of until now. The rapper and producer also claims to have 67,000 copies ready to ship, with 3,000 copies of this player being able to leave the factory each day. “Everyone who supports our revolution is changing the game for all artists“, wrote the rapper. “We don’t have to bow down to people who don’t really care about our music anymore.“. But the billionaire does not say how he intends to help other artists.
We Don’t Talk About Bruno from #Encanto on the Stem Player by Dian pic.twitter.com/NJWNkI69Ok
— STEM PLAYER (@stemplayer) February 3, 2022
This sling of Kanye West also occurs in a particular context, where we find Neil Young in the foreground: at the end of January, the latter decided to withdraw his catalog from Spotify, followed by Joni Mitchell, Nils Lofgren, David Crosby and a few others. The Canadian rocker was originally protesting a podcast hosted by Spotify, accused of spreading false information about Covid vaccines. But the boycott movement threatened to move on the question of the poor remuneration granted to artists by the Swedish platform, which lost in the wake of important points of value on the stock market but refused to give in, while announcing some measures against misinformation.
Started in earnest during the pandemic, the mobilization of artists in favor of fairer remuneration for streaming revenues continues quietly between a few bangs. Failing to benefit from the solidarity of stars well established and ready to take risks, it has not yet borne fruit. Kanye West is just reigniting the fuse. On his own, will he be able to change the situation? Probably not.
The fact that he preaches for his own parish with the sale of a reader for 200 dollars (an astronomical price compared to a subscription to a platform), not to mention the weariness of the public with his increasingly erratic conduct on social networks , does not portend a major turning point. However, this revolution will have to be led one day to change the economic model of streaming platforms, which only benefits a handful of the most prominent artists, and in the process exerts a formatting that is harmful to gender diversity. At the risk, otherwise, of permanently drying up musical creation.