News June 17, 2018

Jay-Z and Beyoncé attack Spotify on surprise album ‘Everything Is Love’

Aussie music fans woke up this morning to a rather nice surprise by way of a brand new album by musical icons Jay-Z and Beyoncé, however Spotify users might find themselves having to wait quite some time for the record to make it to their preferred streaming service.

Earlier this year, Jay-Z and Beyoncé announced that they were heading out on a joint concert tour named the ‘On The Run II Tour’. Needless to say, this lead to a huge amount of speculation about whether or not one of music’s biggest power couples were set to release new music together, or if we’re indeed set to get some Aussie dates as well. With the tour having recently kicked off in Europe, it now seems the former question has been answered.

Being released as a Tidal exclusive earlier today, Jay-Z and Beyoncé have teamed up as The Carters to release their first joint album, titled Everything Is Love, however it seems as though a lot of the music-consuming public won’t get a chance to hear it.

With Jay-Z famously in charge of music streaming service Tidal, the platform has been said to be in struggle town over the last year, with many choosing Apple Music and Spotify over the relatively young platform.

Of course, many music fans would have noticed this over the years, with the pair’s strong loyalty to Tidal means that while the majority of Jay-Z’s back catalogue is absent from Spotify, Beyoncé’s most-recent – and arguably most popular – record, Lemonade, is also suspiciously absent from the service.

This of course means that if you want to listen to the tunes of some of music’s biggest names in recent times, you’d better sign up to Tidal.

In fact, Beyoncé’s lyrics on Everything Is Love’s ‘NICE.’ actually addresses her recent album’s absence, featuring the line “Patiently waiting for my demise ‘cause my success can’t be quantified. If I gave two fucks about streaming numbers woulda put Lemonade up on Spotify. Fuck you.”

As would be expected, many Twitter users have been quick to note the hip-hop couple’s apparent vendetta against Spotify.

Loving the Beyoncé/Jay-Z album. Really dig the tracks “Please Sign Up For Tidal, Please”, “Help! Our Streaming Service Is Dying”, and “Evidence Connecting The Owners Of Spotify To Pizzagate”
— pixelatedboat aka “mr tweets” (@pixelatedboat) June 17, 2018

LMAO BEYONCÉ SAID IDGAF ABOUT SPOTIFY. MEANWHILE SPOTIFY BEEN SAYING THE FOLLOWING FOR TWO YEARS: pic.twitter.com/Wb03Kd06Eu
— Gabrielle ???? (@gabalexa) June 16, 2018

https://twitter.com/carxlinv/status/1008130297228087296

Beyoncé honey, I’m not about to pay $20 to listen to one album, you and Jay need to drop tidal and put this album on Spotify or Apple Music pic.twitter.com/KwV8gA9e2D
— keaton, esq. (@keatxngrant) June 16, 2018

As Rolling Stone notes though, Beyoncé was nice enough to hand out six month free trial cards to fans in attendance at the pair’s London show of the On The Run II Tour while announcing the new record.

While there’s no word yet as to whether or not Everything Is Love will indeed make it over to Spotify in the future, you can help tide yourself over by heading over to YouTube and checking out some of the album’s tracks, including lead single ‘Apeshit’, which Beyoncé was kind enough to upload for us.