New York (AFP)
The catalog of the solo tracks of the famous rapper Jay-Z made its return Wednesday on the platform of online music Spotify, which had removed them at the request of the New York artist two and a half years ago.
"Happy birthday, Hov, welcome back to Spotify," the company wrote in a message posted on Twitter, using one of the nicknames of Jay-Z, who turned 50 on Wednesday.
In April 2017, the online music service had removed the catalog of Shawn Carter, his real name, "at the request of the artist," according to the platform.
The rapper and producer, now billionaire, had not publicly explained his decision but many had linked to his investment in the platform Tidal competitor.
Jay-Z has indeed become majority shareholder of this service of Norwegian origin in June 2015 with the ambition to make a rival of Spotify or Apple Music.
It emphasized an exclusivity strategy and a revenue-sharing policy more favorable to artists than on other platforms.
In January 2017, Jay-Z sold a third of the capital of Tidal to the US telephone company Sprint for $ 200 million.
But Tidal never managed to join the fight with the giants of the sector. After announcing three million subscribers in 2016, the service has not released a new figure since.
Today, Spotify has 113 million paying subscribers and Apple Music over 60 million.
Tidal had also benefited from the exclusivity of Beyoncé's album Lemonade, released in 2016.
But last April, the wife of Jay-Z has surrendered and released the disc on all streaming services.
After having also granted Tidal exclusivity in 2016, rapper Kanye West, close to Jay-Z, has resumed his freedom in 2018 and has also put his music online on all platforms.
© 2019 AFP