Excitement around the imminent release of Ye's latest album, Donda 2, took a slightly confused turn when the artist took to Instagram to post an important update.
“Donda 2 will only be available on my own platform, the Stem Player,” the artist formerly known as Kanye West wrote. “Not on Apple Amazon Spotify or YouTube. 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.”
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That's right: close your Spotify, cancel your Amazon Music subscription, because Donda 2 will be available exclusively on… Stem Player?
In a later post, Ye elaborates on his decision, saying “After 10 albums after being under 10 contracts. I turned down a hundred million dollar Apple deal. No one can pay me to be disrespected. We set our own price for our art. Tech companies made music practically free so if you don’t do merch sneakers and tours you don’t eat.
“Jay Z made Tidal and fake media attacked him. Well in the words of my big brother. Come and get me. I’m willing to die standing cause I ain’t living on my knees no more. God please cover me. I run this company 100% I don’t have to ask for permission. This is our 2nd generation [Stem Player]. We have more things we working on. I feel like how I felt in the first episode of the documentary.”
Like his erstwhile stage partner Taylor Swift, then, Ye is taking control of his music. But what is the Stem Player? And more importantly: is it any good?
Roots of the Stem
First launched at the end of 2021, Ye had actually been developing the Stem Player since 2019, his Yeezy Tech company working in partnership with London-based Kano Computing. The Stem's specs on its dedicated website give some tantalising details of the speaker's capabilities, with elements such as haptic feedback (interactive vibrations and movements), touch-sensitive light sliders, an impressive 97db, and disconcertingly-titled “soft skin”.
So far, so New Age speaker. However, the Stem's USP is in the name. This isn't a regular Bluetooth speaker to chuck in your bag and use whenever you're on holiday: the Stem offers the opportunity to play with each track you're listening to, via four ‘stems’ that control vocals, drums, bass and music samples. Sliding each stem controls how much you hear of each element, giving you a heap of mixing possibilities. Effects and loops are also on offer, giving any budding music producers a tactile toy on which to develop their skills.
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The reviews are in
While interest in the Stem Player has shot up since the announcement (we're writing this piece, after all), the Stem Player has been out since August 2021, and the reviews have been filed online, waiting for this very moment.
Writing for The Verge, Jay Peters remarked on the soft feel of the Stem, which “makes it stand out from the many other metal and plastic gadgets I interact with every day.” While he hadn't felt the urge to listen to an entire album via Stem, he noted how fun it was to play with, and that “for someone who likes to make their own music, the Stem Player could be a mind-blowingly awesome tool.”
However, PC Mag UK's Jordan Minor wasn't a fan of what he called the “unpleasant fleshy texture” of the Stem, but still called the player “an intriguing tool for creating and remixing music”, noting that tech like the Stem “lets total amateurs discover the joys of bending music to your will.”
Engadget's Terrence O'Brien was "somewhat disappointed by the Stem Player’s ability to handle non-Donda tracks", noting that “fairly stripped-down hip hop productions will do ok, but as the complexity of a song increases the Stem Player starts to struggle parsing the different parts.” He did conclude, however, that “[b]eing able to quickly loop a chunk of music, reverse and slap some reverb on it is kinda fun.”
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Our take
The Stem Player certainly seems like an interesting tool for making and remixing music, including Ye's own Donda 2, with the soft, tactile elements of the player lending themselves to an easy, screenless introduction to music production. The £200 price tag is steep for what currently amounts to a fun music-mixing gadget, and with only 8GB of storage, you won't be throwing away your trusty music player yet, but Ye's Donda 2 announcement will have fans eager to save up.
There are bigger forces at play here, too. Ye's influential position in the music industry is undeniable, and this decision, like Taylor Swift's, will send ripples of warning throughout music label boardrooms. In a world occupied by corporate interests pulling the strings behind the music we enjoy, the somewhat elite trend of super-artists taking back control of the music they've created is one that should hopefully lead to change throughout the industry.
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