I guess that’s album promotion for ya… or Ye?
If you thought you’d be able to enjoy Kanye West’s upcoming Donda 2 album via conventional means (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music), you were sadly mistaken. The artist has confirmed that the only way to listen to Donda 2 is via his Stem Player. Which, while it does have music playback features, is meant to make remixing music easy. Coincidentally, it also costs $200.
As Ye states in another Instagram post:
Donda 2 will only be available on my own platform, the Stem Player. Not on Apple Amazon Spotify or YouTube. 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. Go to stemplayer.com now to order.
To be fair, the device is pretty nifty overall. Originally released for Donda 2‘s predecessor, Donda, the Stem Player allows users to isolate elements of the tracks for both albums. You could isolate just the vocals, the drums, the bass, or the samples, or any combination thereof. And while it is explicitly for West’s albums, you can also upload any songs you want to the device via the Stem Player website.
That said, Donda wasn’t exclusive to the Stem Player; it was also available on other platforms. Still, its hard to imagine it’ll remain exclusive permanently. That’s mostly due to the fact that as of his post, there were only 67,000 units of the Stem Player in existence, though another 3000 are being produced every day. Which means that between this announcement and the album’s release they’ll have probably hit 80,000.
Source: Engadget
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