after Beyoncé’s Lemonade appeared for sale on iTunes less than a day into Tidal’s exclusive, it is easy to see how [fans] might grow wary of signing up to any service just to hear one album.
This article looks at the risk of having exclusives on streaming music services.
“Let’s look at what happened with Kanye,” [a music industry source] told me. “He windowed for two months. If you look at his public listener figures since Pablo went on Spotify, you can see he’s had like a 50% jump, from around 15 million monthly listeners to around 22 million. Pablo only hit No 1 when it hit non-exclusive.” As for Beyoncé? “She’s No 1 on lots of charts. She’s No 1 on The Pirate Bay, she’s No 1 on KickAss Torrents ”
Yes, very few people will pay for more than one streaming service. If they really want an exclusive album, they’ll just torrent it.
Source: Tidal: can Prince and Beyonce save the underdog of streaming services? | Music | The Guardian