Prince Chooses Tidal To Exclusively Stream His Album ‘HITNRUN’

When Prince released his new album HITNRUN Phase One on September 7, it was done so exclusively through the online music streaming subscription service run by Jay Z, called TIDAL.

Whether or not Tidal plans on expanding its CD sales to include other artists is unclear.

It’s not clear if Tidal will become something of an iTunes Store, selling digital downloads of tracks and albums, as well as setting itself apart by offering physical copies of the CDs – or if this is just a special one-time promotion for Prince. Well, no more. Now, you can get the new Prince tunes on CD or as a download without being a subscriber of the service.

Tidal mentions that this is the first time non-subscribers have had access to the service’s music.

If this is the start of a trend, it would mean more revenue for artists. His music has never been on Apple Music, but is available on Google Play.

Think about it. After spending years expressing frustration at not being able to share the fruits of his latest all-night recording session with the world right this second, a magical machine appears that allows him to do just that.

Trailed in some quarters as “Prince’s hen party album”, HitNRun initially struggles to live up to that promise. The musician last week also criticized the state of music.

As reported in Billboard, Prince released a statement about his partnership with TIDAL during the summer. This Could B Us is a rather non-descript RnB slow jam (including the none-more Prince line of “sex with us ain’t enough, that’s why we’ve gotta do it metaphysically”) while poor old Lianne La Havas seems rather wasted on the inconsequential skit Mr Nelson, where she contributes a spoken word cameo instead of showing off that wonderful voice of hers. Especially when TIDAL promotes itself as a HiFi streaming service with CD quality audio… it all seems a little odd.

“HITNRUN Phase One isn’t one of Prince’s best albums”.