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All of Jay Z's Blueprint albums appear to have been removed from all online streaming services apart from his own, TIDAL.
Last year saw Jay Z (who has an estimated collective net worth of $1billion along with wife Beyonce) pull his debut album, Reasonable Doubt, from Spotify, following the launch of his own streaming service TIDAL. Now, all three of his Blueprint albums have been removed from Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Google Play Music and Amazon's digital music store.
"Jay Z's Blueprint albums have not been available on any streaming service except Tidal for a few months now," a Spotify spokesman told Pitchfork. "We hope he brings them back soon so that his millions of fans on Spotify can enjoy them again."
Jay Z, TIDAL and Roc Nation are yet to respond to the news.
Last year also saw Prince pull his music from all services except TIDAL, while fellow TIDAL partners Arcade Fire hit out at the service's 'poorly managed launch'.
TIDAL came under fire for appearing to "present millionaire artists as charity cases asking for the public's support," - to which Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler replied: "
"None of the artists knew anything about the PR," he admitted. "It was a poorly managed launch, but conceptually the thing that we liked about Tidal was that it’s HD streaming quality."
He added, "The [major labels] dictated that Tidal has to cost $20. The major label music industry has completely ruined every aspect of their business. At every step of the way they’ve had the tools offered to them to create an industry that works, and they’ve completely blown it. That’s why we never had any interest in signing a contract with one of these companies because they’re clearly completely clueless."
"It seems silly," he concluded, "for fear of being embarrassed, to not at least sit at the table with Jay Z, Kanye and Daft Punk and talk about art and music and how it’s going to be distributed."
