After Tidal’s launch last year, Jay Z was quick to pull his seminal debut Reasonable Doubt from Spotify. It would make sense not to allow your competitor to have your music, even if it might eat into streaming royalties. Jay Z has enough money to cover those short-term losses though. For a long time, it looked like Reasonable Doubt would be the only exclusive on Tidal. However, as of last week Jay Z pulled the entire Blueprint series from Spotify as well.
While a few singles from The Blueprint, The Blueprint 2, and The Blueprint 3 are still available via compilation albums they appear on, Spotify users can no longer access classic tracks like “Renegade,” “Song Cry” or “On To The Next One.” It’s unclear what took Jay Z so long to pull these albums, but now everyone has just a little bit more incentive to make the switch to Tidal.