So What’s Wrong with a Streaming Service Offering Exclusives?
Tidal is after me to join up. Another email arrived this morning which included promises of exclusive performances from them. Something about these exclusives doesn’t sit well with me, though, and I couldn’t figure out what. Then this arrive from Music Industry Blog.
The Problem With Streaming Exclusives
Jay-Z’s ambitions for TIDAL has triggered a lot of discussion about how streaming models can evolve. One focus has been exclusives with a number of references to TIDAL ‘doing a Netflix’ by commissioning exclusives. Netflix can attribute much of its growth over the last couple of years to its flagship ‘Netflix Originals’ such as ‘House Of Cards’ and ‘Orange Is the New Black’. It is an appealing model but the Netflix Originals approach cannot so easily be transferred to music.
There are three main types of exclusives:
1. Service Window: album is released exclusively to a single music service for a fixed period of time e.g. only on TIDAL for 1 month
2. Tier Window: album is released across one type of music service tier before others e.g. only on paid subscription tiers for 3 months
3. Service Exclusive: music service acquires exclusive rights to an album so that it will never appear anywhere else unless the service decides to let it
Read the rest of it here.
