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Kanye listening party apple7/31/2023 ![]() Apple trotted out Lana del Rey, another problematic singer, for its 2018 event to debut her incredibly OK song “How to Disappear.” Considering the Beats by Dre marketing and Apple Music exclusive live streams, surely this is the only logical conclusion to the most ridiculous of Kanye launches in recent memory. The most monetizable ending to this is for Kanye to drop Donda as the ‘one more thing’ surprise during September’s iPhone 13 event. Every time Kanye doesn’t deliver, it’s just another exclusive win for Apple Music. You might just opt to subscribe to avoid the hassle of it all. You can’t watch it later because then, you might miss out on the changes from one listening party to the next. You can ignore it and maintain a shred of sanity - or you can crack Don Cheadle jokes with the rest of us. It blocks you from taking screenshots, so you have to go find mirrors on YouTube or scour Twitter for live updates if you want to be part of the moment. Apple gets people flocking to its live streams. You’d think Apple would be pissed about Kanye but actually, the longer he delays, the better it is for them. I mean, Lorde is selling Solar Power as a discless box, which is effectively a download code and some pretty postcards. The past decade has been littered with stunt-y album launches, ranging from Beyonce’s self-titled album in 2013 to Frank Ocean’s Blonde. Kanye’s Donda release might be the most ridiculous, but it’s not as if he’s alone here. But that also means artists have had to get creative to stay relevant in an era where you could listen to anything you want at any time. Swift returned to Spotify in 2018, after Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said he travelled to Nashville “many, many times” to convince Swift “why streaming mattered.” He won. We’re all on streaming services now, there’s no getting around it. It was a nice try, but ultimately meaningless. One of the most famous examples is when Taylor Swift penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal opposing free music services, and followed it up a few months later by pulling her entire catalogue from Spotify. But while streaming has been massively convenient for the masses, artists have long argued it’s a bad deal. ![]() For better or worse, you don’t even have to curate a collection anymore. There’s no more hunting in the bargain bin of Tower Records, burning CDs, or debating which CDs are worth actually paying retail price. All you have to do is pay a subscription and you can listen to millions of songs ad-free. With streaming has come unprecedented access. But is it a coincidence that these types of hijinks have only worsened in the streaming era? Probably not. This isn’t the first time Kanye’s delayed an album. If you google what the release date is now, it’s a cryptic August 2021. And now, Kanye has announced yet another listening party in Chicago on August 26. (You see, he’d never left the stadium after the first listening party.) Again, the album did not appear. It also listed a second Apple Music live stream, this time from Kanye’s bunker in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Then on August 5, Apple dropped a second Beats by Dre commercial starring Sha’Carri Richardson that featured a snippet of a supposed Donda song for an August 6 release date. Needless to say, an album did not materialise on Apple Music. The live stream was chaos, with a silent Kanye appearing in an Akira-inspired outfit, two hours late. Then Kanye brought Apple into the whole damn thing, with a live-streamed listening party from the Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Apple Music for July 22. Rumours started up again in March this year, with the first surprise listening party happening on July 18. And then, you know, he ran for president. July came and went, though Kanye continued to drop snippets of songs, tracklists, and even album artwork. That was followed by more breadcrumbs, culminating in a supposed July 2020 release date. ![]() ![]() Another hint came in a Wall Street Journal feature. The album was first teased in March 2020, when Pusha T hinted a new Kanye album was in the works.
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