Drake is the unquestioned streaming music king, with over 3 billion streams to date for his album Views. Naturally, he’s become a key player in the ongoing battle between Spotify and Apple Music for dominance in the streaming music market. Views was released exclusives on Apple Music, but the same may not be true for More Life, which releases this weekend.
This would be a huge win for users of Spotify, Tidal, SoundCloud and any other services, as they won’t have to wait to hear the new Drake. It’s a bit of a U-turn for Drake, who seems to have a very close relationship with Apple; he appeared in a commercial for the service late last year.
The reason for the change might be twofold. More Life has been called a ‘playlist’ rather than a full-fledged album, which could change Drizzy’s approaching to releasing it. Also, Universal Music Group’s CEO declared last year that he was not a fan of streaming service exclusives, and that artists sign to Universal and its subsidiaries would not be doing exclusives anymore. Drake is signed to Young Money, which is distributed by Republic Records, which is in turn owned by Universal.
[via HitsDailyDouble]