Kanye West's 'Donda 2' Album Not Coming to Apple Music

Kanye West, now known officially as "Ye," does not plan to release his next album, "Donda 2," on streaming services that include Apple Music and Spotify, opting instead for a proprietary platform.

stem player kanye west
Ye said today on Instagram that "Donda 2" will be available only on the Stem Player, a $200 device that was released with the initial "Donda" album pre-installed. The Stem Player is designed to allow users to "customize any song" with controls for vocals, drums, bass, effects, and more.

As an explanation for why the album will not be coming to major streaming platforms, Ye said that artists "get just 12% of the money the industry makes," and that it's "time to free music from this oppressive system."


The Stem Player was developed in partnership with Kano Computing, and Ye is ramping up production to meet demand. Ye said that there are 67,000 units available, and 3,000 units are being manufactured each day.

Ye has in the past claimed that an album will be exclusive only to release it on streaming services later. Back in 2016, he said that his album "The Life of Pablo" would "never never never" come to ‌Apple Music‌, only to release it on Apple Music a month later.

"Donda 2" is expected to launch next week, on February 22, and the Stem Player can be purchased online.

Top Rated Comments

jyw104 Avatar
29 months ago
No loss tbh
Score: 145 Votes (Like | Disagree)
AngerDanger Avatar
29 months ago
We had a decade of knockoff iPods, and it took another to bring us a poorly cut out smoke detector



Attachment Image
Score: 102 Votes (Like | Disagree)
icanhazmac Avatar
29 months ago
Proprietary player? Is this 2001?

Good luck with that.
Score: 62 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kiensoy Avatar
29 months ago
Lol he just wants to sell his crappy gadget and after that he will add the album to all streaming platforms. So obvious.
Score: 49 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Mr.Blacky Avatar
29 months ago
You need some very special talent, to make a device THIS ugly. ?
Score: 49 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sunapple Avatar
29 months ago
It will come a little later then.
Score: 41 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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