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Monday, April 6, 2015

QUEEN BEY, RIHANNA TIDAL "EXCLUSIVES" GO WIDE

How Can Exclusives Stay Exclusive?

Over the weekend, Jay Z's new streaming site, Tidal, posted a pretty big exclusive: the lovely ballad "Die With You," performed by Beyonce for hubby Jay in honor of their seventh wedding anniversary. Meanwhile, Rihanna released the song "American Oxygen" on the site after it debuted as a March Madness sync on TBS. But the songs were soon everywhere, notably multiple illicit YouTube clips, illustrating the game of anti-piracy whack-a-mole Tidal and other sites will face.

While Sony (which of course owns Bey's label, Columbia) has been vigilantly issuing takedown orders on "Die With You" in the wake of all this unauthorized dissemination, observers from around the Internet have wondered aloud what this means for Tidal and others offering "windowed" content. If every exclusive becomes widely available in mere minutes, how much of a benefit is exclusivity?

On the other hand, the weekend kerfuffle brought lots of free PR for the site and the songs.

How will all this drama affect the next chapter of the streaming saga? Stay tuned.

 
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