It’s here! After much anticipation ANTI has finally dropped.
The album was slated to appear on Tidal Jan 28th at 12:01 AM EST, but it appeared a little earlier when the project leaked online. But .. not to fret for Rih, because she gifted her fans with a limited (but fairly high) number of free downloads of the project.
The downloads are first-come, first-serve, regardless of whether a listener is a Tidal subscriber or not.
Once those free downloads are gone, that’s it, and everybody else will need to pay for their copies of ANTI, or sign up for Tidal and stream it as they wish. According to a release from the streaming site, ANTI will be “exclusively available in streaming and downloadable formats”.
The album consists of thirteen tracks noted below but not the ones you know well. There is a deluxe edition with three additional songs coming on Friday.
This is familiar territory for Samsung, which has shelled out big bucks before to offer a global superstar’s new album at no cost to fans. A few years ago, the tech giant offered one million free downloads of Jay Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail album to those with a Galaxy-branded phone or tablet. At the time of press, the total number of free downloads that Samsung and Rihanna are offering of ANTI wasn’t available, but for the $25 million that the company reportedly paid to work with Rih, it is surely a fairly high number.
Now, given that it’s especially difficult to sell albums at all in these days, Rih may take a hit with sales, but it’s likely that between her sponsorship dollars from Samsung and her co-owner status at Tidal, she stands to benefit more financially from giving away copies through the right partners than by selling them.
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