How Kanye West & Playboi Carti Are Fighting Streaming Platforms

By Writer: Ronan Mitchell

Originally published on: March 27th 2024

Intro:

Streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify may be in trouble, and it's all thanks to Playboi Carti and Kanye West, and the way they've chosen to roll out two of rap's most anticipated albums of the year. Are streaming services here to stay, or will we continue to see more artists drop their music on their websites, YouTube pages, or even Instagram profiles? Let's dive into it:

The History Of Kanye's Streaming War:

As many fans will know, Kanye West just dropped his collab album with Ty Dolla $ign, Vultures 1. The album is one of three projects expected from the duo, and right after Vultures 1 dropped, Kanye began teasing Vultures 2, building hype by previewing his songs at listening parties. With fans begging for the album, Kanye began communicating with his fan pages, asking them how they'd feel about the project being released on his website exclusively.

Kanye, in his reasoning, brought forth the fact that he has over 20 million Instagram followers, and if only a mere 5% of them bought his album off of yeezy.com, his personal website, that would equate to 1 million sales. Kanye expressed his faith in his fan base after selling over 1 million items on his site thanks to his Super Bowl ad. He went on to reference English singer James Blake, known for his collaborative work with rappers, by bringing up James' quote, "streaming devalues our music."

Fans, however, weren't happy about this and went online to express their discontent for Kanye's potential decision. For a plan Kanye had laid out exclusively around the loyalty of his fan base, upsetting them wasn't exactly a good first step in defeating what he sees as the evils of streaming. I doubt lack of support would deter Kanye, as this isn't his first attempt at stepping up to streaming giants.

Only two years ago, Kanye dropped the follow-up to his highly anticipated album, Donda 2, dropping the album exclusively on his $200 stem player. The stem player allowed users to interact with their favorite songs by manipulating different components or 'stems' of a track, such as vocals, bass, drums, and melody. The album never officially charted as Billboard deemed the project ineligible. However, Kanye later declared victory on Instagram, claiming $1.3 million in sales in the first 24 hours, and later a net of $8.6 million.

Kanye's Vultures 2 Plan:

So what would happen if Kanye followed through with this plan and didn't drop Vultures 2 on streaming? Kanye believes he can disrupt the music streaming model once again, perhaps at a much greater scale than when he dropped Donda 2. Kanye has stated his reasoning and logistically, it does make sense. Although I expect the amount of followers that would purchase his album to be closer to 2%, I think the album would build off of the success of Donda 2.

It's also important to keep in mind Vultures 1 performed very well commercially, going as far to have the single "Carnival" reach number one on the Billboard. And when compared to Donda 2, the price point to buy Vultures 2 would presumably be much lower, as it wouldn't require a $200 piece of equipment. But just like Donda 2, the songs would get leaked so that anyone could download the music off of YouTube and other leaked music sites. They could then upload the music to Spotify's local files, Apple Music's local files, unofficial streaming uploads, and various other MP3 players. This would result in a loss of revenue and Billboard stats. However, if the move was a massive success, which it has the potential to be, we could see other artists attempt the same thing, in which we could see major changes to Spotify and Apple Music's business models.

In that scenario, we would see them move closer to Tidal's business model, which is more attractive and profitable to artists.

Playboi Carti's Approach:

Now let's take a look at the album rollout for Playboi Carti's highly anticipated project, "I Am Music." Most recently, Carti has been alternating dropping music video singles for his new project on both YouTube and Instagram, but never traditional streaming services. But isn't for the same 'defeating the man' reasons as Kanye, rather this is to build an online scavenger hunt that generates online chatter.

Ty Dolla Sign & Kanye West Performing Together

Carti's Digtal Scavenger Hunt:

It also leaves a lasting impression, as likely Carti wants fans to jump through hoops to find the tracks on streaming services under another artist's name, or simply upload the tracks to local files themselves. You have to keep in mind, when artists are plotting their album rollout, it's with the intent of becoming memorable so that you'll check out their full project when it drops. And by leading fans on a scavenger hunt and generating online buzz, Carti does that much more effectively than a traditional single-dropping method.

I think if Carti's album sells well, it'll have the effect of more artists continuing to use the singles-to-album rollout method, however this time, with the utilization of media convergence in their fans on a digital scavenger hunt, like the one Carti has set up for his fans. This will mean that YouTube and, unexpectedly, Instagram, will become music platforms. However, this could broaden to other platforms such as Facebook, Tumblr, and more. Until Vultures 2 and I Am Music drop, fans will continue to wait in anticipation, potentially witnessing the writing of history because these two impactful artists may have changed the future of streaming for better or worse.

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