It looks like the price tag of Kanye West’s album may have been too much for even his most hardcore fans to stomach. According to Digital Music News, fans are finding alternative methods of securing Donda 2 to avoid paying $200 for the stem player on which it currently exclusively available, writing an emulator program to allow fans to download the album without the device. DNN took the below screenshot of a Reddit post in which the poster says they stayed up all night to write the tool, which allows users to both download the stems and manipulate them in the same way.
Whether this affects the overall fervor for Donda 2 remains to be seen, but it was a risk Kanye was willing to take to maintain as much control over his music revenue as possible. When he announced that his new album would be exclusive to the stem player, he explained, “Today artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes. It’s time to free music from this oppressive system. It’s time to take control and build our own.” To that end, he also claimed to have turned down a $100 million deal with Apple Music.
After previewing the album at a Miami listening event, Kanye released first four songs, then another 16 to the stem player site. Because of the nature of being able to release his music in this way, there’s no telling whether he’s even done with it, but then, giving fans the option of remixing the tracks to their hearts’ desires largely takes the onus off of the rapper to do that part. We’ll see if his gamble pays off, but with fans finding ways to circumvent the exclusivity and novelty of his stem player, it’s possible that he loses out on at least some of that potential extra profit.
