Prince Pulls His Music From All Streaming Services Except For Tidal

Carl Williott | July 2, 2015 6:47 am
Prince's "HardRockLover": Listen
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Prince giveth, and Prince taketh away. One day after dropping blistering new song “Hardrocklover,” The Purple One has removed his entire catalog from all streaming services except for Tidal, Pitchfork reports. The partnership isn’t out of the blue, as Prince streamed his Baltimore rally concert on Tidal earlier this year.

If you land on Prince’s artist page on Spotify, there’s a message that reads “Prince’s publisher has asked all streaming services to remove his catalog”:

prince spotify remove stream tidal

This comes as a win for the Jay Z-helmed platform after sputtering through the gates with a few PR blunders, followed by Apple Music’s ballyhooed launch this week, which included rights to music from Taylor Swift, Dr. Dre and Thom Yorke. Prince is one of the few artists whose music is actually very difficult to locate online outside of official streams — as NME points out, he removed all his videos from YouTube and has threatened legal action against fans who post unofficial streams. So Tidal effectively has a monopoly of distribution for once, unlike when the platform had exclusive rights to big-name videos only to find them leaked online in a matter of moments.

But is it enough to make flocks of subscribers join Tidal? Chances are anyone who cares that much about the Prince catalog already owns most of it.

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