Exclusives are terrible for consumers and even worse for the music industry as a whole
Beyonce from her new visual album, "Lemonade." I've got good news and bad news. The good news: Beyonce dropped a new album over the weekend, and it's incredibly good. The bad news: Beyonce's new album is exclusive to just two platforms - iTunes, where you can only purchase the album at full price, and Tidal, the streaming music service that's partially owned by her husband Jay Z. Now, I don't care to disparage Tidal or Apple or Beyonce's choice to make her album exclusive through those services. I can't blame Beyonce for trying to make more money for what she does - that's something we all strive to do. But I do believe this recent trend - for big name artists to release music exclusively through certain platforms and not others - is absolutely terrible for consumers. Exclusives defeat the purpose of streaming music services Streaming music services exist because they're convenient and good for consumers: Inst...