Kanye West’s $200 Stem Player will be the only way to get his next album, Donda 2

Photo by Jay Peters / The Verge

One of the best ways to juice hardware sales is through platform-exclusive content, and Ye, the artist formerly known as West, announced via social media that his next album, Donda 2, will only be available on his own platform, the Stem Player. Not on Apple.

The conclusion is the same, even though Ye's reasoning is different from other artists who have spoken out about the differences between their deals and how much it pays them. He wrote in a previous post that today's artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes. It is time to free music from this system. It is time to build our own. You can order at stemplayer.com.

The album is going to be released on February 22nd.

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We currently have 67,000 available and are making 3,000 a day.

It worked well in our testing, allowing owners to easily manipulate different parts of a song while listening, whether for one of the included tracks or any others loaded via its web-based interface. Adding loops and effects can be more difficult. It has a 3.5mm jack, a 97db speaker, and 8 gigabytes of storage.

Will Stem Player owners be able to download anything from the upcoming album? In February 2016 he released The Life of Pablo exclusively on Tidal and it will never be on Apple. Ye settled a lawsuit from a fan who said they signed up for Tidal based on his song "The Life of Pablo."

According to the outlet, the dispute over millions of dollars was the reason for the cancellation of West's contract with Tidal. Sources said he would be done with exclusives.

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The music may be tied to the hardware platform, which could make the release different. Since last night's announcement, the artist has continued to post on social media, but older posts about Pete Davidson, Billie Eilish, and Kid Cudi have disappeared.

Ye said that tech companies made music practically free so if you don't do tours you don't eat. The fake media attacked Jay Z. My big brother said that. Come and get me. I'm willing to die standing, I'm not living on my knees anymore. I need God to cover me. I don't have to ask for permission to run this company. There are more things we are working on. I feel like I did in the first episode of the documentary.