“Inside Beyoncé and Jay-Z's Billion Dollar Empire - E! Online” plus 1 more

Inside Beyoncé and Jay-Z's Billion Dollar Empire - E! Online

Posted: 04 Sep 2018 12:00 AM PDT

Streaming: Music streaming services like Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music and yes, Tidal, have changed the way we listen to music and the way artists profit from it. Essentially, artists and songwriters receive royalties based on the number of times their content is streamed, but with the pre-Tidal streaming model, even big names like Beyoncé and Jay-Z were receiving paltry payouts.

Now with this, Jay-Z saw a business opportunity. As his famous lyric goes, "I'm not a businessman/ I'm a business, man"—and that means you've got to take some risks. So in 2015 for a reported $56 million, Jay purchased Aspiro, the Swedish parent company of Tidal.

Within a few months, Jay-Z relaunched Tidal as a premiere subscriber-only streaming platform. He did so with the help of several other "artist-owners" including Bey, Madonna, Rihanna, Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Nicki Minaj and Chris Martin.

Tidal pledged to offer top-quality sound and video to users, and by eliminating the free tier of membership, Jay-Z said Tidal was able to "pay the highest royalty percentage" to artists.

Tidal wasn't exactly the instant success the Carters were hoping for, but Jay and Bey kept riding the wave they created. On April 23, 2016, Beyoncé released Lemonade exclusively on Tidal to help drive subscribers to the streaming service; the visual album was available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon Music two days later, and two weeks after its initial release, Lemonade was available for sale at physical retailers.

She did not release the album to Tidal's streaming competitors—a fact she acknowledges in "Nice," the fourth song from her and Jay-Z's joint album Everything Is Love. As she sings it, "...[My] success can't be quantified/ If I gave two f--ks, two f--ks about streaming numbers/Would have put Lemonade up on Spotify."

The 113 best songs of the past decade, ranked - Insider - INSIDER

Posted: 13 Dec 2019 08:04 AM PST

2. "Nights" by Frank Ocean

frank ocean nikes video — Frank Ocean in the music video for "Nikes," off his 2016 album "Blonde."

Plenty of songs feature sudden gear shifts or transitions, including other songs on this list. But none will ever give you the same disorienting thrill as Frank Ocean's two-part odyssey "Nights."

Warm, sparkling guitar riffs initially dominate the song. But these eventually fall away, giving way to heavy synths, before a voltaic staccato effect triggers a new direction and a new beat: A slower, psychedelic haze drenches the final minute of the song. Ocean's voice becomes slightly distorted, pitched higher than before.

Structurally and compositionally, this is Ocean's most ingenious work to date. "Nights" plays an essential role within the context of its parent album, "Blonde," with its mid-song beat change landing precisely in the center of the 60-minute tracklist — down to the exact second.

Much has been written about how "Blonde" plays with duality, and "Nights" embodies this theme. For the casual listener, the iconic beat switch reflects a shift from day to night ("New beginnings, wake up akh / The sun's goin' down," Ocean sings just beforehand). But for a devoted student of Ocean's work, there is so much more to unpack.

Lyrically, this song could be analyzed and digested like capital-R Romantic poetry. Ocean has always been able to load brief stanzas with double meanings and layered interpretations, and with "Nights," he touches upon a veritable feast of modern, existential concerns: exploitation, the drive for pleasure, the fear of mortality, the monotony of life, the loss of innocence (Has there ever been a more perfect way to describe a phone call from an ex than "Did you call me from a séance?"), and Ocean's own struggles as a student in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit.

And if your eyes glazed over all of those sentences, that's OK. This part is the most important: You don't need to know where Ocean went to school to appreciate the song. You don't need to spare one thought about any of this. One of the best things about "Nights" is how it feels hypnotic and captivating in any moment, on any playlist. Worship at your leisure.