Where Can I Listen to Kanye West’s New Donda 2 Album?
UPDATE (FEB. 24):
Kanye West has now uploaded a total of 16 songs to the Stem Player, all of which were played during the Donda 2 concert earlier this week.
ORIGINAL POST:
Kanye West is changing the game. He just dropped four songs from his Donda 2 album, but there's only one way to hear them as of right now.
Today (Feb. 23), Ye unveiled the new songs from the LP, only to be heard through his Stem Player device. After announcing his Donda 2 album, executive produced by Future, back in January, Ye revealed on Feb. 17 that the project would only be available via his new Stem Player.
"Donda 2 will only be available on my own platform, the Stem Player," he captioned a presumed snippet of the new album on Instagram earlier this month. "Not on Apple Amazon Spotify or YouTube. 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. Go to stemplayer.com now to order."
He added in another post, "You can download new music from stemplayer.com. You can play 4 different elements of the track: vocals, drums, bass and music. It also has a MP3 player available. We currently have 67,000 available and are making 3,000 a day. Go click the link in my bio to purchase."
This afternoon, the songs "Security," "Pablo," "Broken Road" and "We Did It Kid" were all released on Ye's Stem Player. If you have the device, you can connect it to your computer and the songs will download. You can purchase the device on Kanye's official website here or stemplayer.com.
Ye launched his new Stem Player, a $200 pocket-sized music player created by Yeezy Tech and Kano Computing, last August. The device allows users to be their own producer, and remix album cuts by using vocal stems, bass, drums and samples, making for a fully customizable experience. All by way of minimalist touch sensitive controls.
With the latest announcement, West reportedly pulled in over $2 million in Stem Player sales within 24 hours. It was also revealed he passed on a $100 million deal with Apple in order to self release the new album on his own platform.
Things may change, like they did with the 2016 Life of Pablo release, which was initially exclusively available on Tidal before going to other streaming services. But for now, it looks like Ye's Stem Player is the only way to legally enjoy Donda 2.