Kanye West to release Donda 2 only on his $200 stem player
Kanye West announced overnight that fans would not find his upcoming Donda 2 release on any streaming music service. The only way to listed to Donda 2 will be on his own $200 stem player.
West created the Stem Player in conjunction with tech startup Kano Computing.
The Verge describes Stem Player this way: “(it) has no screen, meaning you listen and mess with music using a few buttons and four touch-sensitive “stems” on the device. Together, they can be used to manipulate the “stems” (different aspects of a track like the vocals or the drums)… thanks to machine learning, it can pull off the same trick with any album you put on it.”
The original Stem Players came pre-loaded with the first Donda album which was also released on traditional streaming services.
This time Kayne West is taking a more radical approach with a self-release exclusively in his own $200 device. In a string of posts West reiterated a claim that he turned down a $100 million Apple deal and chided the streamers for making music available “practically free.”
“Jay Z made Tidal and fake media attacked him,” West posted overnight. “Well in the words of my big brother. Come and get me. I’m willing to die standing cause I ain’t living on my knees no more. God please cover me. I run this company 100% I don’t have to ask for permission. This is our 2nd generation stemplayer We have more things we working on. I feel like how I felt in the first episode of the documentary.”
West also shared what appeared to be the Donda 2 tracklist.
Bruce Houghton is Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank and serves as a Senior Advisor to Bandsintown which acquired both publications in 2019. He is the Founder and President of the Skyline Artists Agency and a professor for the Berklee College Of Music.
