The four year wait for a new Frank Ocean album is over. Due to the long wait and endless rumors in regards to this album, it’s not surprising that it has some controversy surrounding it.
We all saw the live stream of the empty room used to promote Frank Ocean’s new album. A lot of us checked this regularly just to catch some sort of activity relating to the album. On the 19th of September Ocean release a visual album entitled Endless. A day later he release the “real” album entitled Blond.
Here is where the issue is. Frank Ocean was obligated to provide Universal with one more album and he essentially fulfilled that with his visual album Endless. Therefore Universal essentially have had no control, or even reaped any benefits, in regards to Franks critically acclaimed Blond album. Many people have heralded the move as a great business move, whereas others have questioned the integrity and legitimacy of the move. Regardless, Frank Ocean released Blond as an exclusive deal with Apple Music to further solidify Apple’s presence in the digital consumption market. Basically, it’s Apple in, Universal out.
Unfortunately the full details of this situation have not yet been revealed. However if there’s one thing that’s for certain it’s that this is not the last we hear of this story. Ocean is expected to shift 250,000 equivalent units in the first week and if in fact Universal have somehow been cut out of this deal, they will have lost out on significant profit. There are alleged claims that Universal intend to sue if this matter isn’t resolved. It’s too early to say how this one will pan out, however we are sure the staff at Apple are over the moon.