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Quick Hits: Spotify gets political, two items about Jay-Z’s new album

Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web:

Spotify is with the “banned”: Spotify has launched a new venture with a political slant. “I’m with the banned” highlights artists from communities impacted by or at the center of current events. On July 6, it introduced an installment with playlists featuring artists from nations impacted by the travel ban proposed by Donald Trump’s administration: Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen and Iran.

Exclusivity window ends for 4:44…sort of: Jay-Z’s new album, 4:44 spent a week exclusively available on the Tidal streaming platform he owns. On July 6, the new release became accessible on almost all other streaming services. The one glaring exception appears to be Spotify. Jay-Z had previously taken his catalog off that platform, and his latest work is also not available to Spotify listeners.

4:44 won’t be on Billboard charts yet: Because 4:44 was only on Tidal for its first week, it won’t be listed on the Billboard charts for its debut. Tidal does not share its streaming data with Billboard, so even though it was exceedingly popular in its first seven days, the album’s performance won’t be noted in that official capacity yet. 4:44 also attracted lots of attention from pirates, possibly because of the week-long exclusivity window.

Anna Washenko

One Comment

  1. Hi Anna… you mentioned above that “Tidal does not share its streaming data with Billboard.” Tidal does in fact share it’s data with Nielsen Music (Billboard’s exclusive chart data partner) and Tidal activity is included in the Billboard Top 200 and other streaming charts every week. However, they decided not to share activity from Jay-Z’s 4:44 specifically just for the period it was exclusive on Tidal. Tidal reported activity on all other titles that week, and will begin reporting activity on 4:44 each day for the week ending Thurs 7.13.17.

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