Kanye West, or as he's now known, Ye, has cut ties with Apple entirely and decided to release his music via his own route. It seems as though this decision is working out well for the cultural icon.
Last week, Ye announced that the highly anticipated sequel to the DONDA mega-album, DONDA 2, will release solely through his Yeezy Stem Player platform. "Today artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes. It’s time to free music from this oppressive system. It’s time to take control and build our own" said Ye, focused on innovation and exploration. He later explained in a bit more detail how the new system would operate:
"DONDA 2 will only be streaming on my own platform, the stem player. You can download new music from stemplayer.com. You can play 4 different elements of the track: vocals, drums, bass and music. It also has a MP3 player available. We currently have 67,000 available and are making 3,000 a day. Go click the link in my bio to purchase."
Since then, the Yeezy team has gone on to end a sponsorship deal with Apple and seek out new means of streaming the upcoming DONDA EXPERIENCE live event.
A few short days later, the numbers for the purchases of the first Yeezy Tech item, the Yeezy Stem Player, were solidified. Ye posted a very short visual schematic of the item, with his good news as the caption: "To earn the $2.2 million we made on the first day on the stem player the album would have had to stream 500 million times We did more revenue on stemplayer, without the album even being out, than we would have done with the album being out on streaming."
With DONDA 2 just days away, what track are you most excited for? Check out the tracklist here.