While the release was an Apple Music exclusive for the first fortnight since coming out on April 29, it is now available on Spotify and elsehwere, hence the additional boost in numbers. This, according to HipHopDX, brings the total streaming number to 572 million. The album is now sitting at the top spot on the Billboard albums chart for the third week in a row, and in the past week alone, has been streamed more than 186 million times. And that’s how it is now, despite our inclination to pretend that the internet means all the music is available all the time in one benevolent cloud.Drake‘s album Views continues to push boundaries and break records, now apparently reaching an astronomical half a billion streams. Not all music was available whenever and wherever you wanted then. But the fact is this pick-and-choose-your-streaming-host landscape is not that much different from the old pre-streaming model of going to your local CD/record stores and rolling the dice: Maybe they have the album you want and maybe they don’t, maybe you have enough money to buy it and maybe you don’t. If you think the digital age means everyone deserves a right to stream whatever music they want, then this is problematic. With Adele keeping 25 off streaming services and crushing modern sales benchmarks in the process, The 1975 getting a #1 while keeping their sophomore album off Spotify for two weeks, Taylor Swift shutting out Spotify or now Drake giving Apple Music an exclusive window for Views, this is clearly the status quo for big releases. Kanye West went exclusively with Tidal for Pablo‘s first two months, which kept it off the charts, and then he still got a #1 this week (and a historic one at that) when the LP was untethered from Jay Z‘s service. For pop’s juggernauts, the exclusive/windowed release strategy is shaping up to be the most viable option, regardless of whatever flawed chart metrics it may muddy up. The past year has made it increasingly clear that music’s biggest stars have no need to maximize the number of services that host their new material. But you zoom out and it basically confirms that the age of the wide release is over. But Buzzfeed reports Apple is only getting a one-week exclusivity window before it’s made widely available, much like the release of his joint album with Future, What A Time To Be Alive. On a micro scale, this isn’t notable.
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