For much of the 20th century, AT&T held a firm grasp over consumers in the United States. Despite many fruitful years, the demise of the monopoly was based on the frustration of consumers who sought to use different phones but were subsequently unable to do so. Eventually, the Justice Department issued a mandate to break up the system. Now many cellular providers such as AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon compete for consumers by offering them the best deals.
In most cases, like in the wireless industry of the last 40 years, a competitive industry equates to a healthier one. However, the competitive dynamic that has prevailed in the music industry the last two years has been bad for the industry and its consumers. These days, a major factor for some consumers to purchase an iPhone or an Android is so they can listen to music on them. Yet the animosity between streaming companies such as Apple Music (built on the $3 billion purchase of Beats) and Tidal (owned by artists like Jay Z and Kanye West) has left a bad political aftertaste. For example, when Frank Ocean released his much-anticipated new album Blonde, many fans were upset it was available only on Apple Music after they had switched to Tidal to hear other exclusive albums such as Kanye’s The Life of Pablo. These exclusive deals have grown in popularity the last two years as Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade led to more than one million customers creating a Tidal account.
In response to the Apple and Tidal feud, West tweeted that “This Tidal Apple beef is fucking up the music game.” Additionally, according to Bloomberg Technology, Spotify has penalized some artists that have chosen to sign exclusive deals with Tidal or Apple Music. At the end of the day, the music industry is a business, and companies and artists have the legal right to act in any way they see fit between those boundaries. Nonetheless, jealousy and business jabs have no moral place in an industry that should be focusing on providing as many people as possible with the music that they love.
Artists such as Chance the Rapper have made it clear that they are more focused on the art form than the business side of the industry. For instance, he refused signing with a music label in order to remind young artists who have been caught up with the business side to not forget the purpose of making music in the first place. In a Rolling Stone article he questioned, “What’s an album these days anyways? Cause I didn’t sell it, does that mean it’s not an official release? So I might not ever drop a for-sale project?” Chance has kept to his word, not excluding anyone from streaming his music for free while remaining independent from a label. It’s artists like Chance that move the industry in the right direction.
Ezra Solway is a senior English major. He can be reached at esolway@terpmail.umd.edu.
