Exclusives are terrible for consumers and even worse for the music industry as a whole

I've got good news and bad news.The good news: Beyonce dropped a new album over the weekend, and it's incredibly good.The bad news: Beyonce's new album is exclusive to just two platforms - iTunes, where you can only purchase the album at full price, and Tidal, the streaming music service that's partially owned by her husband Jay Z.YouTube/BeyonceBeyonce from her new visual album, Lemonade.Now, I don't care to disparage Tidal or Apple or Beyonce's choice to make her album exclusive through those services. I can't blame Beyonce for trying to make more money for what she does - that's something we all strive to do.But I do believe this recent trend - for big name artists to release music exclusively through certain platforms and not others - is absolutely terrible for consumers.Exclusives defeat the purpose of streaming music servicesStreaming music services exist because they're convenient and good for consumers: Instead of buying a standalone album for $10, you could spend that same money each month to get all the music you could possibly want. It doesn't matter what you listen to or how much you listen to it, you simply pay each month to get access to a massive catalogue of music.But what happens when your favorite artist releases a new album and you can't access it over your music service?Beats 1Zane Lowe is one of the hosts of Apple's 24/7 radio service, Beats 1.It's okay for streaming services to differentiate themselves a little bit. I don't mind that Apple Music has a unique 24-hour radio service (Beats 1) while others don't, and I don't mind that Spotify is the only service that has something like Discover Weekly, which creates an incredible mixtape for you each week based off your music tastes.Differentiating music services becomes a problem, however, when music services start to offer slightly different (not entirely different) catalogs of music.For example, Beyonce and Kanye West are in allegiance with Tidal (Kanye's facing some legal trouble after initially saying his latest album would never be on Apple Music, even though it currently is). Drake, meanwhile, will release his next album (coming this weekend) as an Apple Music exclusive. Taylor Swift is also an Apple Music artist; she refuses to put her music on any other streaming service.This is a huge problem for anyone who loves all of these artists. (And many people do.)It's bad when all your favorite artists are divided by the various music services that court them (see: pay them extra money) to go exclusive. This practice is great for lining artists' pockets, but it's awful for consumers.Nobody - and I mean nobody - wants three separate music libraries and three separate applications to access that music. And certainly nobody wants to pay $10 per month per service.If you want Apple Music and Spotify and Tidal, you'll have to pay three times what you'd pay for just one of those services, even though the vast majority of their catalogs and features overlap.Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Roc NationThe artists of Tidal, from left to right: Usher, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Madonna, DeadMau5, Kanye West, Jay-Z, and The Weeknd.Exclusives encourage piracyExclusives aren't just bad because they force people to pay more money to own separate, slightly different silos for their music.They're also bad for artists, too, since exclusivity encourages piracy.We saw it in February with Kanye West's new album, The Life of Pablo, which broke piracy records when it launched as a Tidal exclusive.Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty ImagesIt also happened to Beyonce a few years ago when she launched her self-titled album as an iTunes exclusive. And piracy of Beyonce's newest album is reportedly following a similar trajectory to Kanye's highly pirated album.You see the problem here, right?All the innovation around music over the last 15 years has been about defeating piracy. Online stores provided a more legitimate way to purchase and own music on multiple devices, instead of just copying CDs or downloading random MP3s from dubious services like Napster and Limewire. Then streaming services came along as a cheaper and more convenient way to listen to music instead of buying it: You pay a small monthly fee to listen to all kinds of music, even if you don't actually own any of it.Streaming services are continually getting better, but the practice of selling exclusive albums and creating exclusivity windows - where fans on certain platforms can't listen to new music for a period of time - is encouraging piracy once again.In this regard, I've got to give credit to the few streaming services that aren't simply trying to court big name artists into signing exclusivity deals, like Spotify, which provided the following statement to Tech Insider:We believe long-term exclusives are bad for artists and they're bad for fans. Artists want as many fans as possible to hear their music, and fans want to hear the music they're excited about - exclusives get in the way of both. Of course, we understand that short promotional exclusives are common, we don't have a total policy against them, and we certainly respect the choice of artists to decide what's right for them. Bottom line, we're looking forward to sharing Beyonce's awesome new music with her millions of Spotify fans as soon as we can.We also reached out to Tidal. The company was not immediately available to comment.Still, I really hope other services and artists follow suit: Exclusives and windowed exclusives have absolutely no benefits for consumers or music fans. It's fine that artists want to make more money, but it shouldn't be at the expense of their fans, many of whom cannot afford to multiple different services. NOW WATCH: Taylor Swift rapped and then fell off a treadmill in a new Apple Music ad if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; } RunFunctions.push(function() { var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'Fwc3loMjE6Fsd3QPn-t3LILRv5f1H9qj',{ autoplay: 'false' }); }); Please enable Javascript to watch this video (function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }());

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Exclusives are terrible for consumers and even worse for the music industry as a whole

Exclusives defeat the purpose of streaming music services

Exclusives encourage piracy

NOW WATCH: Taylor Swift rapped and then fell off a treadmill in a new Apple Music ad