Jay Z’s music disappears from Spotify and Apple Music

Jay Z, renowned hip-hop artist and owner of the Tidal streaming service, has quietly removed the vast majority of his music from streaming services Spotify and Apple Music.

As The Verge reports, Jay Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, has requested the removal of his music from the services, leaving only a few select singles, features, and projects with artists such as R. Kelly and Linkin Park available for listening.

As it stands, this is the third time that Jay Z’s music has been removed from streaming services, with his debut record Reasonable Doubt being removed in 2015, and his Blueprint series of records being removed from all services save for Tidal last year. Notably though, Jay Z’s music is still available on Google Play Music, save for the aforementioned albums.

While no official statement regarding the removal has been offered by Jay Z, The Verge does state that it was done at the request of the artist. Regardless of the reasons, it raises questions as to why Jay Z waited so long to restrict his music to Tidal, especially considering the high-fidelity streaming service was acquired by Jay Z in March of 2015.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.