Last night the Country Music Awards was broadcasted with a rumor Beyoncé would be making an performance during the show. Of course this set the internet on ablaze when it actually happened. She hit the stage backed by the Dixie Chicks who are not new to the world of controversy.

Mark Beyoncé down again to top the chart with her latest release, Lemonade. The projected numbers have her set to sell around 500k albums, 900 tracks and generate up to 45 million streams. Believe it or not those sale numbers represent a 19% decline over her previous first week with album titled Beyoncé.

Although my month long free trial of Tidal just ended, I'm committed to maintaining a subscription to the premium music streaming service headed by industry favorites including Jay-Z, Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, Madonna and Kanye West. I will be the first to admit, I was very hesitant to literally buying into a streaming service knowing that there is so much music that's legally available online for free. Ultimately, it took the respect and love I have for the consistent genius artistry of Kanye West to give the highly publicized platform a shot once he announced that his new album, The Life of Pablo, would only be released via Tidal. Not only did TLOP live up to my expectations, I fell in love with all of the other great music I had been missing.

 

Being that it's been reported that Pablo's exclusive release helped double Tidal subscriptions, it's no surprise that right when the free trial period came to an end, Yeezy made multiple tweaks to his latest project including altered vocal arrangements on 'Famous', new vocals from Sia and Vic Mensa on 'Wolves', and a new track called 'Frank's Track' featuring Frank Ocean. Although other streaming services such as Apple Music, Spotify, Rhapsody, and Google Play are all doing well, and perform in many areas better, Tidal continues to show promise as a work in progress with many powerful artists with ownership stakes. That makes room for a lot of new exclusive music and video releases, where loyal subscribers can get first dibs on spontaneous releases.