Kanye West has been promoting his new album DONDA 2 for the past couple of weeks, assuring fans that it will release on Feb. 22nd.
While we have our doubts whether that date will stick, he has an important update for the fans today and it’s a crucial one. ‘Ye says the album will only be available on his stem player and will won’t hit any streaming services because of the low payout to artists.
“Donda 2 will only be available on my own platform, the Stem Player. Not on Apple Amazon Spotify or YouTube,” Kanye announced in his latest Instagram post. “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.”
The Stem player is a puck-shaped device that fans could use to remix Kanye’s last album DONDA. Using it you can change the volume of different stems, or tracks, in the songs on DONDA. Back in October when the device was shipped to the buyers, it came with 3 extra songs that were not found on the retail version of DONDA.
The device was developed by the rapper’s Yeezy Tech brand and electronics company Kano. It has a headphone jack and Bluetooth support as well as a USB-C port, volume buttons, speakers, a haptic engine and 8GB of storage. It looks like fans will get the same functionality with the sequel.
A few days ago, Kanye revealed that Kid Cudi won’t be featured on DONDA 2 because of his friendship with Pete Davidson, who is currently dating Ye’s ex, Kim Kardashian. It is set to be executive produced by Future.