Ye Turned down $100 Million from Apple Music to Release DONDA 2 Exclusively on STEM Player

The Innaovator

In our latest article ” #BlackFutureMonth : 3 Black innovators that are shaping the future of music ” we listed Ye as one of 3 black innovators moving music forward. The other 2 on the list are Nas, and Snoop Dogg. Nas and Snoop are both heavyweights in the NFT space. The Dogg sold over $44 million worth of Stash Box NFTs in just 5 days through his Gala Games partnership! Nas and Royal, an NFT music royalty startup, dropped an NFT that allowed fans to purchase a share of streaming royalties to two of Nas’s songs. It sold out in weeks and crashed the Royal site.

STEM Player

Unlike the other 2 on the list, Ye rejects NFTs altogether and focuses on more tangible means of selling his music. He created the Stem Player, basically an MP3 player that allows you to isolate different sounds on a track. With West releasing his upcoming project DONDA 2 exclusively on the player he will retain 100% of his earnings from the sales of his album.

His own path: Ye VS Streaming

Streaming pays artists less than a penny per stream. Spotify, for example, pays out .0004 cents per stream. Though Streaming did save the music industry from collapse. The reality remains that the average artist cannot make a living from streaming earnings. According to Music Business Worldwide, there are just over 13,000 artists on Spotify earning 50K a year in 2020. That number may seem impressive until you consider that there are over 3 million artists utilizing Spotify. A number that is fair to assume is WAY higher since Spotify hasn’t shared those statistics publically since 2018. Even with these given stats, that still only equates to .043% of all artists making an average yearly salary.