The exclusive release of Beyoncé’s new album has given a massive boost to her husband Jay Z’s celeb-backed music streaming service Tidal.

The exclusive album seems to be Tidal’s biggest weapon for 2016 in the music streaming wars. Beyoncé surprise launched her album ‘Lemonade’ last month exclusively on Tidal, earning the high quality music streamer a massive boost of 1.2 million new subscribers.

Beyoncé’s new album follows another massive exclusive on the Jay Z owned streaming service, Kanye West’s ‘The Life of Pablo’. The long awaited album from the rapper gave a massive boost to the year old streaming service pushing its app to number 1 in the Apple App Store. The album was a success for Tidal until Kanye went back on exclusive claims and released The Life of Pablo on other streaming services, like Spotify.

https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/699376240709402624

Rihanna is another worldwide music star that released her new album exclusively through Tidal early this year which earned Tidal even more listeners, though Rihanna’s album was only a first week exclusive. With these 3 massive stars all releasing new content exclusively Tidal is being pushed from the niche streamer it’s been to a major player in the streaming business, having tripled its subscribers to 3 million before the release of Beyoncé’s Lemonade.

Rihanna
Rihanna’s ‘ANTI’ was a temporary exclusive for Tidal when it launched in January

Lemonade has earned over 300 million streams so far whilst Kanye’s TLoP managed 250 million streams in it’s first 10 days. As partners in the business, and close friends/wife of the owner rapper and businessman Jay Z, it makes sense for Beyoncé and Kanye to favour the service. But will it be enough to push the streamer into successful territory in a contested industry?

With two of the most high profile artists onboard with Tidal launching albums already this year Jay Z will have to hope they can survive on their service alone from here. Or maybe just release one of Kanye’s other 2 albums exclusively later this year.

https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/708670997612908546