The music streaming industry is experiencing increased competition between Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal, leading services to pursue exclusive release deals with popular artists. Spotify has the most total users but Apple has been the most aggressive in signing exclusive deals that have helped them attract top artists like Drake and Taylor Swift. While exclusive deals are controversial among some labels and services, they have become a major trend in the industry as each service tries to differentiate its catalog and attract more subscribers.

1. A growing trend that I’ve been thinking about lately is the streaming war between
Apple Music, Tidal & Spotify. As a result, there are new strategies like exclusive
release deals going on all throughout the industry.
With Spotify having 40 million paid users (100 million total users) they are the streaming service to
beat. Apple's 17 million paid users & Tidal's 3 million paid users puts the pressure on to compete for
new customers. That's where the exclusive deals come in.
If you're a fan of some of the biggest artists in the world, like Drake, Beyonce, Frank Ocean, Kanye
West, Future & Taylor Swift you would have to subscribe to a couple different streaming services to
get a new album. Apple & Tidal are notorious for their exclusive releases. Artists like Kanye giving
rights to Tidal & Drake giving rights to Apple it's a major trend happening in the industry. It's a
complicated thing for both customers & record labels. Even though the customers are having to run
around to different streaming services & the labels are losing money & control, the exclusive deals
aren't going anywhere. Out of 'The Big Three', the only major label that isn't ok with this new trend
is Universal Music Group. They had a bad situation with Frank Ocean & sent out an internal memo
banning all UMG artists from making exclusive deals. Universal Music Group being the only label to
fight back against these deals isn't going to do a lot. Other labels like Sony are willing to continue
the deals "if the right deal comes along." Spotify also has a problem with the deals, causing the
streaming service to kind of bury the exclusive project/album once they do get it & do what they
can to keep any part of the project off of their top playlists. Even with all of that, streaming is
dominating the music industry, making it so labels aren't as in control as they were in the CD
era. Jimmy Iovine & Larry Jackson at Apple Music are major players in the way of streaming music &
responsible for starting the exclusive deals. They continue to reshape & be the innovators for this
new era. Iovine says "users will get used to having multiple streaming services, in the same way TV
viewers might be customers of both Hulu & Netflix." The new powers are Apple, Spotify & Tidal.
Apple Music being the most powerful, making exclusive deals with top artist & offering more than
Tidal or Spotify can, funding music videos, giving artists TV ads & their own Beats 1 shows. This
starts the conversation about artists staying independent & not signing record deals, An example is
Chance the Rapper & his major success with his debut album, done with an exclusive deal with
Apple & no label at all.
Apple Music is the dominant streaming service. They are the only one to sign artists as if they were
a record label, with distribution, promotion & funding. Spotify has more users but doesn't do
exclusive deals & hasn't started providing anything that Apple or Tidal hasn't already. Tidal only has
3 million users & has the support of artists but can't seem to compete, yet. Apple is too big & too
rich, with a worth of $586 billion, they have the power to give the artist pretty much whatever they
need. On top of controlling the streaming & exclusive deals, Apple is great at building relationships
& giving the artist freedom to do their own thing, while helping create without limits. An example is
the relationships & success they've had with megastars Drake, Future & Taylor Swift. After the
success of all three of their individual exclusive deals, the relationship extended to an ad put out by
Apple that featured Taylor on a treadmill, rapping along to Drake & Futures hit 'Jumpman' which
increased sales by 431%. Larry Jackson says "the goal is to put Apple Music at the intersection of all
things in pop culture.