Jim Carroll: How downloads are killing downloads

There are many lessons to take away from the kerfuffle around the release of Rihanna's new Anti album. For a start, it was another WTF moment for Tidal, the streaming service which can't seem to do anything right. This time, a "system error" meant the album turned up on Tidal before it was due.

For another, it shows the complicated web you get when you are an artist signed to a major record label who also owns 3 per cent of a streaming service.

Universal Music would probably have preferred Anti to appear initially on Spotify, the service it partly owns, but Rihanna went instead with her mentor Jay-Z and her 3 per cent. So much for Universal's capital investment in the act to begin with and those contracts, eh?

Then, there’s the corporate brand looking for some RiRi special love. At least we can presume that Universal made a few bob out of the million pre-release copies of the album Samsung bought to give away for free.

But most of all, Anti shows that the idea of exclusive content staying on a single platform is nonsense in this day and age. Tidal and Samsung may have got the jump on everyone else with their deals and "system errors", but Anti was available on all your favourite pirate sites within a few hours.

If you wanted the album and you weren’t a member of the Tidal or Samsung gang, you still could get it the same day.

The basic idea behind exclusive content is to use fans' anticipation for a new release to force them to use a service or product they have no interest in otherwise. We have seen this happen of late with Dr Dre (who initially released Compton on Apple Music), Jay Z (who got paid handsomely to hawk millions of copies of his so-so Magna Carta Holy Grail album to Samsung) and now, Rihanna.

You can see why a brand or service would pay to get their hands on a new album first. Heightened anticipation means many fans will buy or sign up to what you are hawking in order to hear the music first. That the acts who have made cash out of these deals happen to be from the hip-hop and R&B side of the house shows that they are pretty savvy when it comes to keeping an eye on the bottom line.

However, thanks to the wonders of technology, the music gets out of the walled garden faster than you say “to rip or not to rip”. With physical releases, the exclusive window could last for a week or longer, but best of luck trying to get that sort of time with online files and streams.

You can understand then why brands increasingly prefer to pay handsomely for a live event or performance. This delivers all the experiental buzz a marketing department can handle in the shape of an one-off, unique event that can’t be copied or leaked. The exclusive album killed by the exclusive gig.