Frank Ocean’s ‘Blonde’ Amplifies Discord in the Music Business
The shoo-in for No. 1 on Billboard’s next album chart is Frank Ocean’s “Blonde,” which has charmed critics and enthralled fans who had waited four years since his last record.
But the release of the album last weekend, through an exclusive deal with Apple, has also roiled the industry, bringing to the surface long-simmering tensions that record companies have with streaming music services, and sometimes even with their own artists.
Within days of the album’s release, a series of revelations about Mr. Ocean and “Blonde” — whose cover art spells it “Blond” — emerged that portray a business deeply in flux. Mr. Ocean, it seemed, was no longer signed to Def Jam, his record company, when “Blonde” was released. He had apparently fulfilled his contractual agreement with the label with the release of a separate “visual album” the day before “Blonde” came out — a move that cut Def Jam and its corporate parent, the giant Universal Music Group, out of the profits for one of the year’s most-anticipated albums.
At the same time, Universal’s management decided to clamp down on the growing practice of releasing new music through exclusive deals with digital outlets like Apple Music and Tidal, a move that reasserted the label’s control over the music its artists produce but also risked alienating top performers who benefit from such promotions.
As the industry has struggled to interpret the fallout from “Blonde,” one thing is clear: In the streaming age, the complex series of relationships that the music business relies on to function have become anything but harmonious.